Lost in Time
by sevenofmine
Summary: When the Doctor arrives at Keel Miller Industries, he has no idea what chain of events he has set in motion. When he is captured, it is upon a prior and a later Doctor to save him. But his earlier version comes accompanied by a new woman who has no idea what importance she might have... Suited for both New Who and Classic Who fans.
1. Serial 1 - Episode 1

**Serial 1 – Evolvement to Extinction**

 **Episode 1 – The Laboratory of Death**

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New story, new luck. I've had this story for quite a while but could only now decide to actually put it online. It features mainly the 10th and the 8th Doctor, as well as the 12th Doctor. Whether you are a New Who fan or a Classic fan, I invite you to read my story and if it helps, project whatever Doctor you like most. It is also featuring the Master in the form of Roger Delgado. Please leave a review.

If you are interested in further science fiction fanfictions of mine (besides those I have published her already), I could be persuaded to upload to lengthy Star Trek stories (one DS9 and one with a new set of characters, but partly DS9) which I have completed (and whose sequels I am currently working at).

 **Now, sit back and enjoy :)**

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Rose. He saw her smiling, waving her hand, opening her mouth to say something, something of great importance, she was beginning to laugh about something, her eyes were sparkling with emotion and she began fading away.

"Doctor?"

The 10th Doctor was torn out of his day dream. "Yes, yes, I'm here," he stated and looked into the confused eyes of Martha. How could his thoughts drift away? He had to focus on the here and now.

"Where're we going this time, Doctor?" Martha asked, noticing that he had been thinking about something else – someone else.

"Somewhere we haven't gone before!" The Doctor exclaimed and started pushing buttons on the TARDIS.

"So you have absolutely no idea where we could travel to?" Martha said and folded her arms. She was a bit angry with The Doctor for not paying attention to her – again. But somehow she had gotten used to being looked through. Who was this other woman that must have been so special to The Doctor? What did she do that I don't? What did she have what I don't have?

If she wanted to draw attention to herself she had to take the initiative. "Can you teach me how to fly the TARDIS?" she proposed and stepped forward.

The Doctor looked up with a strange expression on his face. She couldn't tell if he was annoyed, surprised or sorry. "The TARDIS controls are a highly sensitive system and very damageable. In addition to that, the TARDIS is sometimes a bit touchy..."

"Doctor!" she urged him again. Didn't he trust her? She's been travelling with him for much longer now than she should have. She's got studies to finish! She's got a life to start!

"Alright, alright," he said, now smiling again. "Come over here. This is the starting lever. With that, you initialise the dematerialisation. Once within the time vortex, you need to constantly control the internal integrity and the availability to the power source. If the power is suddenly drained – for whatever reason – the TARDIS needs to emergency land on whatever planet and in whatever time that is nearby."

"But how can someone be nearby if we're in this time-vortex-thing?"

"Time is not a straight line. It's more like a big ball of-"

"I did take Physics at school, Doctor!"

"Imagine a straight plane to be our space-time universe," The Doctor and showed her his flat hand. "When we enter the time vortex, we enter a tunnel that shortens the way between two events in time, A and B." He took a pencil that was lying on the top of his consol and held it in between his folded hand, in order to show a tunnel, reaching from his palm of hand to his fingertips."

"Got it," Martha nodded.

"Now...space-time does absolutely not behave like this! At least not the way we are using it right now. Imagine bits of time and space leaving the palm of my hand and randomly walking through the space engulfed by my hand. If we have to leave the time vortex, the pencil, we end up on whatever space-time-piece just happens to be nearby."

"So if we travel from London, 1954 to Edinburgh, 2134, and have to make a force landing, we might end up on Vulcan in the year 3000?" Martha asked, already regretting her wish to fly The Doctor's second best friend – after Rose.

"Exactly!"

"And what does it have to do with me pulling this lever in order to get somewhere else?"

"Why are you listening to safety instructions each time you're taking a trip by plane?" The Doctor answered and pointed at the buttons left to Martha. "These help you to tell the TARDIS where you want to go."

"Are they broken? I mean, when have we ever ended up where we wanted to go...?"

"I think they just need calibration."

"Why don't you do it then?"

"It's described in the instruction manual how to do it..."

"And you can't find it?"

"I threw it into a supernova – I disagreed with it," The Doctor said and while walking over to a few funnily blinking buttons Martha realised why they had never managed to end up where they wanted. Great, she thought. He's indeed a mad man with a box. A mad man with a box and without an instruction manual for his mad box.

"On the screen over there you can see place and time that the TARDIS is targeting."

"It's in Gallifreyan."

"Look here. It says, "Humanian Time", meaning we consider your way of time measuring."

"How do you measure time?"

"Differently... Push that button over there and enter a date that you want to go to."

Martha did as told but hesitated when choosing a year. The date was her birthday, but her birthday didn't matter when randomly wandering through time. She then chose her brother's birthyear, she had always wanted to see the 80's…on another planet.

"Done."

"Now space. Space and time are actually the same, you can express time in meters and such but right now – in the easy flying mode – you can either choose coordinates or a city that has been programmed in the TARDIS' memory."

"It's still in Gallifreyan," she reminded him. Didn't he notice or were his thoughts somewhere else?

"Oh right. I'm choosing Morlock now. Nice planet."

"Morlock? I've read a novel by HG Wells in which-"

"Yeah, Wells – he was nice. Always seemed a bit out of this world though," The Doctor interrupted and pulled the initialising lever. Martha wanted to say something but couldn't as her priority was to grab hold somewhere when the TARDIS dematerialised and entered the Time Vortex. When this shaking became stronger, she glanced at the Doctor.

"Is this normal?"

"No, can you check the internal integrity?" he asked her and she looked at the blinking lights, feeling totally unable to cope. The Doctor was meanwhile joggling the levers and pressing some random buttons himself.

"You shouldn't have thrown the manual into the supernova, you know?" Martha stated, slowly panicking. What was she thinking, running away with this mad man?

"The TARDIS has picked up some strange signals and is trying to alter the course by herself," the Doctor finally answered. "I'm putting on autopilot."

"And letting 'her' altering the course?"

"She's got her own mind, you know!"

"Totally," Martha said sceptically and sighed. She continued watching The Doctor who seemingly tried to interpret the buttons and signal lamps on the console.

"I've adjusted the TARDIS to constantly scan its environment and raise an alarm if it picks up some strange signals...which she did. She's found Theta radiation."

"Theta radiation?" Martha asked unbelieving. Why was he always having fun like a little child when something surprising or unforeseeable has happened that would probably put them in mortal danger and within less than an hour they'd be running for their lives.

"Theta radiation is being produced during some cyber-implanting techniques. It is unavoidable when connecting metal implants with organic organs," The Doctor explained. "It's complicated...bioengineering and stuff," he added when seeing Martha's confused face.

"Alright," she answered. "Let's go investigate."

The Doctor smiled about her agreement and only half a minute later, the TARDIS has landed.

"The display doesn't work. I don't know where we are."

"Do you know 'when' we are?"

"Er, 1984 – the display is still set for humanoid time counting."

He grabbed his coat and was the first to step out of the TARDIS. "It's a bit cold, don't you think?"

Martha closed the door behind her and took a look around. They had materialised in some sort of laboratory, although she directly noticed that it was indeed a 'cyber-lab'. There were huge computers at each working place, huge because they reminded her of computers used in the 1970's, combined with some scifi-gadgets. Some of the devices she could only identify on the second glance: an HPLC, a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrograph… The lab seemed indeed to combine chemistry with engineering and reminded her on the bioengineering laboratory where she had had physics classes at university.

"Doctor, is that a body?" she asked and ran over to a body-like shadow lying on the floor. "Thank God. It's only a dummy." She looked up again. The Doctor hadn't even reacted. He was simply wandering around, taking a look at the equipment on the lab tables. Only then did Martha notice that the room had no windows.

She walked over to one of the computers whose lights were blinking. She pressed space on the keyboard and a prompt appeared. "I hated Computing Science classes in the first semester," she muttered and typed in '/date'. "It's the 5th December 1984... The computer software is in English?"

"No, it's probably just the TARDIS translating," the Doctor answered.

"But why would it translate a date?"

"Good point," the Doctor admitted and walked over to her.

"And it looks like Earth computers from the 70's. Just...upgraded."

He gave her a worried look which she couldn't interpret. "Yes...it seems so. Come on, let's see if there're more labs of this kind," he proposed and she followed him into the hallway. It looked sterile and reminded her on the hospital in which she had first met the Doctor. There were doors to her left and right, but she kept following The Doctor.

"Where are you actually heading to?" she wondered as he kept walking straight forwards.

"No idea," he gave back, smiling as arrogantly as he always did.

She rolled her eyes and demonstratively stopped at one of the doors. "Aren't you at all interested what there is behind this door?" she asked and pointed at the door knob.

"Go on and open it," he prompted.

She did so. The first thing she noticed was the unwelcomed odour of decay. "What on Earth has happened here?" she wondered loudly and noticed in the same moment up to ten stasis units upright at the walls. She made her way past the many computers towards the chambers. She wiped away the fog on the window and what she saw made her blood curdle. "Cybermen!" she exclaimed in the same moment as a shrilling alarm sounded through the building.

"Let's get…out of here," The Doctor proposed as the lab door was already banged open.

"Who are you? How did you get in here? This is the maximum-security department!" one of the three men who were stumbling into the laboratory shouted.

"It's alright, it's alright. We're unarmed and coming with good intentions," The Doctor assured.

"You'd better hope so," the leader of the small security troop said and signalled his friends to put down their guns.

"How did you get in here? It's five o'clock in the morning."

"Yes, it might be. Could you please define the 'where' a bit more?" The Doctor asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Where exactly are we?"

"You're in the maximum-security bioengineering department of Keel Miller Industries."

"Which year, which planet?"

"We have the year 1984, December 5. The planet is Mondas… Who are you? Where have you come from?"

The Doctor breathed deeply. Martha thought she had seen a glimpse of recognition in his eyes. Had he been here before? Did he know the people, or the situation? Did he know how to get them out of here?

"You've drifted away from Earth decades ago. Now your population has grown weaker, especially in contrast to the other life forms on this planet and you retreated to perform cyber-genetic experiments. This is the secret facility where you have – or will create cyber-enhanced humans, also known as Cybermen. Am I correct?"

The three men blinked several times before the leader said: "This will be the last time I ask: Who are you and where are you from?"

"My name is Martha Jones and this is The Doctor," Martha decided to take the initiative. "We're from Earth – at least I am. We have arrived in The Doctor's spaceship, called a TARDIS. We have coincidentally landed in one of your laboratories with our ship, disguised as a big blue box. We did not mean to intrude but we found you were emitting some strange…" she looked to The Doctor for help.

"…strange Theta radiation. A by-product of your experiments, I assume?"

"You are a physicist?"

"Kind of. She's a Doctor," he answered and pointed to his companion.

"It was an accident, really. We did not mean to intrude. We had no idea about your facility," Martha added. Of all the planets in this universe, how did The Doctor always manage to get them into trouble?

"Can you show me your box?" he asked.

"Mantro," one of the other man warned his boss.

"It's alright. You can go back to the monitoring room. I'll accompany The Doctor and his friend to their 'blue box'."

The two guards nodded and left the three of them alone. "My name is Dr. Mantro Sigas, by the way. I'm supervising the final step of the cyber-genetic upgrading process, and sometimes I'm also on nightshift. We've got many break-ins from protestors from all over the continent. And the Sea Devils aren't too happy with our progress either."

"But why?" Martha asked while they were walking to the lab where The Doctor and she had landed.

"The climate becomes unbearable. We need to change to adapt. And many here on this planet fear change. The Sea Devils and Silurians see our Cyber-conversions as a threat, because it would make us more powerful. But this is not our goal. Our goal is it to stay alive."

"For now," The Doctor muttered under his breath.

They had arrived in the main lab. "This is you spaceship?" Dr. Sigas asked and pointed at the TARDIS. "It's a thirty year old police box!"

"It is just disguised as one. But it's bigger on the inside, don't worry," The Doctor explained. He then turned around to face the bioengineer again. "So… how's your work going?"

"You just broke into a high-security laboratory and want me to tell how my work is going?"

"It doesn't work, does it? You're doomed, even without the terroristic attacks of the other species. And you don't want to tell the people so that they don't lose their hope."

Dr. Sigas nodded. "Partly right. The problem is the air of this planet. It's becoming thinner on the surface. It's no problem for The Sea Devils as they live under water, and neither is it dangerous for the Silurians, as they prefer their caves under the earth."

"What if I offered you my help?" The Doctor proposed.

Despite the engineer's happy expression, Martha's face displayed a mixture of fear and surprise. Did The Doctor just propose to create Cybermen? One of the deadliest races in this universe? When Dr. Sigas nodded speechlessly and in relief, she hoped the Doctor had a plan – if not, she would have to stop him before he could do something that would endanger the entire universe!

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 **Don't forget to leave a review.**


	2. Serial 1 - Episode 2

**Episode 2 – Unforeseeable side effects**

She still couldn't believe it. Here she was, on a foreign planet, in a different time, with people who looked like humans, but who she couldn't accept as being truly human. It was afternoon and the bigger sun was at her highest point in the sky, shining down on the huge city that could be seen from the laboratory in the 5th floor of the building. Martha preferred staring outside, examining the mountain range far behind the city or watching the small river running towards and disappearing in the hills on the Western side. This view calmed her down because she knew that whatever was being done behind her could either mean rescuing a civilisation or completely annihilating other ones.

The Doctor seemed to have noticed her concerns and walked over to her. He, too, looked outside, silently staring into the snowy landscape. "You know that I have to help these people…" he begun justifying his decision.

"You're creating Cybermen. You yourself have told me how dangerous and deadly this race is. And now you're responsible for everything that might happen in the future!" Martha said.

"You don't really believe that I would create such machines I have told you about? I'm trying to save the people – and avoiding to create Cybermen as we know them."

"But if you did this, wouldn't this change the future anyway?"

"The Cybermen I told you about, the ones I encountered with Rose; they were from a different universe. This has nothing to do with my actions here. The only thing I am worried about, is my second appearance on this planet. I will return in a few months, and then the Cybermen will have been created."

"That's what I am talking about!"

"But I can't really remember what happened. This memory feels some kind of…lost. It means that it's no fixed point in time and that whatever I decide right now, will be the right decision. That I meet – or met – the Cyberrace as I told you won't be changed. They have been recreated over and over again, but these Cybermen on this planet – they might be changed. They might not be like those in the parallel universe, or those who fought against the Daleks in our universe…"

Martha didn't respond. Why couldn't he stop talking? What he said made no sense. Cybermen in this universe or the other one, it made no difference for her.

"Just answer me one question, Doctor," she said and faced him. "Are we safe?"

"Yes, Martha," he responded without hesitation. "We are safe." With those words he returned to his work with the fellow Mondasian scientists and Martha was sure that something terrible was about to go wrong and that it would have fatal consequences not only for all the living species on this planet, but also for this universe…

The Doctor returned to the two bioengineers who were bending over a petri dish. "We're ready to inject the cyber-substance," one of them informed The Doctor.

He nodded and took the syringe to fill it carefully with the newly synthesised nanoprobes. "Let's hope this version isn't so radical in attacking the blood cells," he said and added the mixture to the blood sample. Then he placed it in the microscope. All three scientists stared at the computer monitor to see what was happening on molecular level. The five injected nanoprobes dashed through the red mixture which appeared grey on the screen. One probe had clung on a red blood cell. It started forming a thin layer around the blood cell.

"What are you trying to do?" Martha asked.

The Doctor turned around. He hadn't noticed that she had joined. "Due to the weather conditions it is becoming impossible for the humans to respire because the heme group of the haemoglobin molecule does not bind oxygen anymore. We've designed nanoprobes that attach to the red blood cells and form a protective layer around them. In the second phase they should rebuild a heme group. The nanoprobes is made of steel, which means that it forms a molecule similar to heme, just based on carbon, chrome and nickel. The important iron molecule of course stays iron."

"I didn't study material sciences, Doctor…"

"Steel is iron with carbon. Most of the time, other elements are added to adjust the characteristics of the material, such as chrome, phosphorus, nickel and so on. These elements build exactly the same structure of the haemoglobin that we have in our red blood cells, just on top of the blood cell itself. The most important element in heme is the iron that binds the oxygen in order to transport it in our circulation system. As steel mainly consists of iron, forming artificial heme isn't the problem."

"Then what is?"

"Restricting the nanoprobes on red blood cells. They are quite aggressive and would like to convert every living cell in the body."

"And here we have the birth of the Cybermen."

"What are these 'Cybermen' you keep talking about?" one of the bioengineers asked.

"Nothing. Just a cybernetic race we have met a while ago," The Doctor responded.

"Like the Borg?"

"You've met the Borg before?"

"We haven't, but the Silurians have. Nasty race, they said. Trying to convert every living soul into one of their own…"

"Yes, they do…" The Doctor murmured and turned back to the screen. "Here, again. It's still trying to attack white blood cells and platelets!" He sighed. Would he really be responsible for the creation of Mondasion Cybermen? Wasn't he already responsible for enough deaths in this universe? Why couldn't he just stay out of trouble and go meditating at the Eye of the Orion?

"Let's start from new," he proposed.

"What if we add an automatic self-destruct after a certain time span and we would need to retake nanoprobes every day?" one of the scientists asked.

Martha walked away again. She couldn't stand to listen to this techno-babble anymore. She needed something to do – something else than fetching brilliant scientists coffee. She left the laboratory complex and found herself in a sterile, white-painted corridor. She was used to rooms like that; it looked like the hospital she trained in. But still she felt uncomfortable here.

The Doctor hadn't even noticed that Martha had been gone for four hours when she returned. She explained she had been wandering through the recovery garden behind the building and asked for their progress.

"It was quite a simple mistake. We just had to add a cyberchip onto each probe that contained 'directions' for where to go. The experiments look much more promising right now," The Doctor said. "I think we can start the patient phase in five hours."

"Patient phase? You're actually trying to convert a real person?" Martha could not believe her ears.

"Listen, Martha. These people here are dying. We need a fast solution!"

"But that's no reason to discard any ethics left in research!"

"It will be completely safe! We have installed an aborting mechanism in each probe. We can stop the experiment whenever it might become too dangerous," The Doctor reassured her with a smile. She nodded, she trusted him. Why else should she have run away with him?

The next few hours she continued watching over the scientists' shoulders, trying to understand what was going on. She had no problems understand the medical site of their attempts, but she had absolutely no idea about engineering and material sciences, and The Doctor just seemed to know everything. The evening approached and The Doctor and four other scientists left to the cellar in order to inject the nanoprobes into two volunteers, Dr Sigas and Dr Hunton. Martha wasn't allowed to join because the security measures were incredibly high. The cellar could easily be sealed in the case that the experiment went wrong and the building was evacuated except for the basic staff to stay. Martha protested until she was allowed to remain in the building as well. She was scared for The Doctor. Not only because he was her only way home, but also because she has become his friend. And he sometimes needed a human hand, to remind him on that he neither was unerring.

"Are you nervous?" a female biology professor asked and sat down next to Martha at the huge desk in the bioscience office.

"Of course. The Doctor is a friend of mine. If anything goes wrong, he'll be locked up in there with these Cybermen!"

"They aren't Cybermen, not like the Borg. We're just trying to enhance them with technology. But you don't have to worry. Everything will go just fine. We're injecting them the nanoprobes now and after the adjustment phase, they'll go to sleep in the Genesis Chambers and be monitored throughout the night. If anything goes wrong, we can immediately abort the experiment," she reassured with a smile that scientists always put on when having no idea what they were talking about. Martha knew that smile, she put it on often enough when talking to patients.

She was too tired to argue and decided to nod and silently disagree. She waited for more than an hour until The Doctor, accompanied by the other two scientists, returned.

"Everything seems fine until now," The Doctor explained to Martha. "They're both stable, but Dr Sigas has much faster adapted to the nanoprobes. His conversion is more progressed than Dr Hunton's." He looked around. Most scientists were leaving to their small quarters in the building. Only the very basic staff stayed, their eyes fixed on the many monitors which showed the test chambers.

"Don't you think it's time to go to sleep as well?" The Doctor asked his companion.

"I'm quite tired," she admitted and followed him to the TARDIS. "But I'm not quite sure if I can close my eyes at all…"

However, one minute after lying down in her loft bed, she was already asleep and had no idea what at exactly the same time was going on in the test chambers…

When Dr Sigas awoke from unconsciousness, he needed a few seconds to remember what had happened. He was part of the experiment; he would be the first to adapt to the climate, the first to save his people. His name would be put down in all the history books to last forever. He turned his head to look at the computer monitor. The nanoprobes had attached to 76% of all his red blood cells. "Time for phase I.2," he muttered and checked the conversion of his fellow scientist, Dr Hunton. His one was at 54%, just enough to start changing the test chamber conditions into those of the air outside. He initiated the process and the chamber cooled down to minus degrees and changed the artificial composition of the air to less humane characteristics. Dr Sigas felt the change and embraced the temperatures. The injection, allowing his cells to adapt their growth and suicide cycles to the lower degrees, started working.

Suddenly, he gasped for breath. What was happening? It was a reflex when not having enough air. But he should be able to breathe as his blood cells were overlaid with a steel skin. He looked over to Dr Hunton who did not seem to have gained consciousness yet. He tried to reach the controls again to reverse the air conversion but it was too late. He couldn't retransform the composition of the air. "Stop it! Abort the experiment!" he screamed at the camera. He saw how the scientists upstairs in the laboratories overwrote the command codes of the computer in the testing chamber. The temperatures were rising again. "No! Make it stop," he shouted. He couldn't stand the high temperatures.

"Make it cold again!" The temperature stopped at minus five degrees. "I need the cold," he muttered while trying not to suffocate. He stretched his arm to reach the monitor again and screamed when seeing that his skin was slowly turning grey. The nanoprobes had evolved! They did not only attach red blood cells, but also his skin cells. The upper skin layers were made of dead skin cells, without nucleus and without protection which made them easier to be attacked. He tried to rip this steel skin off but he couldn't grab hold of it. Yelling in pain he stumbled forwards and out of the Genesis chamber. In all his pain he looked up and saw his reflection in the window glass. His face had been transformed as well. He was a machine. But he was a human! Not a machine! Not a Borg!

He heard an alarm going off. But it wasn't the alarm of the building, it was the alarm of the other Genesis chamber. The life signs of Dr Hunton were dramatically sinking as his transformation wasn't progressed enough to adapt to the weather conditions in the chamber. Dr Sigas looked at the computer monitor responsible for the air and saw a blue screen: Error! The scientists upstairs must have lost control of the computer. "Don't do anything!" he screamed at the camera in panic. "Don't abort the experiment. I have it under control!" Everything was going so fine. If they flooded the chamber or destroyed it, everything would be lost. He didn't care for his own life, but only for the scientific progress. "I got it under control," he muttered to himself and stumbled over to his colleague. His feet were so heavy, as was his own body. The nanoprobes were doing their work. But he had stepped out of the Genesis chamber which had given him the for the conversion necessary steel supply. Now the probes had to work with the steel amount that was already in his body.

He checked the computer for Dr Hunton. The conversion was too slow. He looked around and found what he needed: A second injection! It will kill him, he thought but nevertheless, he had to give it. Right after injecting him with a second supply, Dr Hunton suddenly awoke. He gasped for air, just as Dr Sigas, then starting shouting and yelling.

"Everything is fine. The transformation has worked!"

"It hurts! It hurts so much!"

"It's just in the beginning. Your body needs to adapt to the pain."

"Make it stop! Make it stop!"

Dr Hunton also walked out of his Genesis chamber but fell to the ground.

Dr Sigas couldn't understand. He, too, felt pain, but it was still bearable. He couldn't stand his fellow scientist, and friend, suffering like this. Should he kill him? Hardly possible, as his skin was also transformed into steel. Continue the process. That's what he was supposed to do! But what exactly? He had a look around. They had left everything that might be needed in an emergency inside the room. Lots of steel and steel and steel. That was it! Not a steel skin, but a steel case. Much more robust. All over the body! He started by placing the right steel pieces which were abundant in all shapes and sizes, onto Dr Hunton himself. But it didn't help.

It was a flash of inspiration and there were so many contra arguments crossing his mind at the same moment, but he had no time to think about ethics. He helped the screaming Dr Hunton back into his chamber and connected him with all the cables that he didn't break when having escaped. He then reprogrammed his computer to get access to the nanoprobe's suicide mechanism. The only difference was that he did not want them to commit suicide: But to continue their progress into the nerve system. Without pain, Dr Hunton could survive. The only thing making him inhumane and crying right now was pain. If Dr Sigas could relieve him of that emotion…

He worked without hesitation. If he had looked back he would have seen that the cameras were offline and that the communication with the labs did not work either. He did not know that the scientists were right now discussing to bomb the test chamber as they had no idea what was going on. The only thing that gave Dr Sigas enough time to complete his actions was that half the scientists trusted him to find a solution while the other half wanted to flood, bomb and fill up the cellar of the building. Only because the scientists upstairs could not agree and hence not act in time, did Dr Sigas successfully remove all pain of his colleague. The nanoprobes had attached to the nerve cells, but what Dr Sigas didn't know was that the probes also crawled upwards the spine and into the brain.

When Dr Hunton opened his eyes again, Dr Sigas was very relieved to probably having saved his friend's life. But on the second glance, he noticed that something was wrong. Not only no pain in Dr Hunton's eyes, but also no emotions. Everything had been deleted.

"It worked," Dr Hunton recognised with a tinny voice. "I have fully adapted to this environment." He looked around as if he was scanning the environment. "No pain, no emotions. No pain is what makes us stronger. We must help the others!"

"Yes and no. We have to help the others, but we need our emotions. Otherwise we would lose our humanity!" Dr Sigas said.

His friend looked at him as if he looked directly through him. "Humanity? Look at me! Do I look human? No, humans cannot survive here. But I can. My human part is gone; the rest of the humans need to go as well. We are the new race, Montras. We are the ones that survive the climate change. And we need the others to survive as well!"

Dr Sigas stumbled backwards and fell on the floor because he still wasn't used to his steel-parts.

"You don't agree?" Dr Hunton realised. "We are the future of the people. You either adapt to the climate changes like us or you die a cold death outside. But I can help you. If you don't want to adapt, I can help you die faster. Faster than outside." He stepped forwards and reached out his hand.

Dr Sigas felt the cold metal on his not yet transformed neck. "If you don't adapt, I help you avoid the suffering of a slow death. I will make it fast," Dr Hunton said and grabbed harder. Dr Sigas squeaked and his body then sank lifelessly to the ground. "People have to adapt," Dr Hunton muttered and stomped towards the chamber door. "They need to adapt in order to survive. They need to be upgraded."

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	3. Serial 1 - Episode 3

**Episode 3 – The End of the Beginning**

Martha awoke from a tinny noise. As if someone had dropped a bowl of steel tools and wires. "Cybermen!" she shouted and feared that her worst nightmare has come true. She had never dressed as quickly as now and within two minutes she arrived in the console room of the TARDIS.

"Have you heard that?" she asked when again there was the sound of steel clashing with steel.

The Doctor nodded but still didn't turn around. He was fixed looking at his computer screen. "I've hacked into the surveillance cameras. Dr Hunton has been converted into what we would call a prototype of the Cybermen. He has started attacking the scientists."

"Oh my God, we need to stop him!"

"We need to warn the people," The Doctor said and finally turned around.

Martha was relieved. The first words of reason these days. "Okay, how do we do it?"

"I'll leave the TARDIS here. We're right now in a fixed scheme of time and space, we can't move the TARDIS just in space but not in time."

"I guess going back in time to stop this from ever happening isn't a possibility either?"

"Unfortunately not. It's the laws of time. You may not know them, you may not feel what is right and what is wrong, but on my planet, we have a sense for this. We need to leave the TARDIS here. Nothing will happen to her, she is very robust. But we need to go to the city."

"And leave the scientists here to die?!"

"They have weapons. Dr Hunton is only one person. But in case they fail…"

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," Martha summed up what the Doctor was saying. And after all, it seemed right. There were hundreds of people only in the closest town. Among them also the many scientists who had gotten the night to rest. If they let these scientists in the labs die, they could save the rest of this world. There were not only humans, but also Sea Devils and Silurians and whatever else was hiding on this planet, unaware of the tragic occurrences happening right now.

She nodded. "Let's go then," she said and together they left the TARDIS. It was still in one of the labs, but in one that wasn't used tonight. They heard shouting people, a weapon fire. "They're many, he's just one," The Doctor tried to reassure her.

"But he's a Cyberman!"

"Not one of those that we know. He isn't fully converted. There's no Cyber-net. We can still warn the people, gather enough of the other scientists and return to help the ones who are here. And if they see that they have no chance to stopping him, they'll evacuate the building and run into town as well. We can still rescue everybody!" he explained and took her hand. Together they were running towards the staircases. Martha wondered whether The Doctor told her all this to make her feel safe, or only to reassure himself that he was doing the right thing.

Dr Hunton was sure that he was doing the right thing when ripping off the whole fuse box in the maintenance room of the building. These people needed help, even if they didn't realise it. The light flickered and the emergency lamps went on. An alarm sounded and the sprinkler system started to pour rain on him. Luckily his steel skin was coated with chrome oxide and wouldn't oxidise any further. He continued his walk upstairs. His fellow scientists should be the first ones to be helped. He needed them to help him convert the other people in the town. Arriving in the fifth floor he heard Dr O'Mara screaming when she saw him.

"Keep calm, Evelyn," he assured her. "This is the only way to survive the weather conditions outside."

"Stop it, Hunton!" another former colleague of him shouted. He was armed.

Dr Hunton shook his head. This would be more difficult than he thought.

It had become dawn and Martha was out of breath when she returned to the marge of the city. It was hard to breathe, the air contained only a small percentage of oxygen and the temperatures were usually dropping under minus thirty degrees overnight. One of the families had given her a warm thermos-coat, but despite her sweat she felt like freezing to death. She began to realise how desperate these people must have been to survive and understood why they had been so keen on testing the nanoprobes before they had gained enough theoretical data.

"Most people are leaving town and heading southwards. They'll go to the caves that lead to the Silurian city," The Doctor approached her from behind. "Together they'll have a chance."

"You assume that everyone in the laboratory will have been converted."

"They've just been created. They aren't really Cybermen. Not as unbeatable as we know them."

A long silence followed.

"You were right, Martha," The Doctor finally admitted.

She looked at her feet. She had wanted to hear this, but before a catastrophe happened.

"I think…I think it was a predestination paradox. I was supposed to come here. I was supposed to create the Cybermen!"

"We need to stop it, Doctor!" Martha said and started walking towards the Keel Miller Industries facility. She felt guilt, too. After all she had been steering the TARDIS when they landed here. "All these people…" she muttered to herself.

Why didn't it work? Dr Hunton had successfully transplanted steel components on his colleagues, injected nanoprobes and reprogrammed those just as Dr Sigas had done. But they didn't listen to him. Two of his colleagues were staring into nothing, one was crawling on the floor and the other two were discussing Einstein's General Relativity.

"You need to listen to me," he repeated. "The people need us! They need to be converted in order to survive. It's our only chance!" Did no one see it? They were all geniuses! Was he…just more intelligent? No one else saw what he was seeing. They would survive. They would be superior to anything and anyone on this planet. He needed to take the initiative.

He ripped out the cables from the wall and opened the isolation at their ends. He needed to connect his mind to theirs. His brain was already being converted into a metallic system so it would be easy to transport the electric impulses.

Martha didn't remember the way from the edge of the town to the plant as that long. She needed to stop once in a while to gasp for air. Slowly, it was becoming warmer when the suns rose again, but still she seemed to be freezing to death.

"Don't you think he'll see us approaching?" she asked The Doctor.

"I think he's too busy converting the other scientists…"

Martha hoped so…

They entered the building complex and Martha had expected the air to be warmer.

"He probably turned off the main power which included the heating," The Doctor explained before she could ask. "Let's go up into the 5th storey. If we can make it to the TARDIS I could connect the TARDIS controls to the main computer and despite the power outage give it enough power to destroy every research that has been done here. Without the data, Dr Hunton can't continue his process efficiently and he cannot enhance his genetically engineered status into what we would call Cybermen!"

"Whatever you say, Doctor," Martha agreed and tiptoed up the stairs. They stopped when they heard metal scratching and a woman shout. Very silently they then continued upwards and The Doctor looked through the half-opened door.

"What is it?" Martha wanted to know.

"He's connecting himself to the transformed scientists. I think he makes himself the Cyber-Controller. We need to hurry!"

As silent as they both could, they walked forwards.

"Which lab number did you land the TARDIS in?" Martha whispered.

"I didn't land the TARDIS, you did."

"Don't you get smart now!" Martha hissed. She was really fed up with The Doctor's behaviour right now but had no real choice. She had to do what The Doctor said to stay alive.

"It's right here," The Doctor said and pointed to a biology laboratory. She nodded and slowly they opened the door. It creaked more than she remembered and more than it should have. The noises from the bioengineering laboratories nearby stopped suddenly. The Doctor pushed the door open with force.

What Martha saw scared her stiff. The TARDIS was gone. And so was their only hope to come back home.

* * *

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	4. Serial 2 - Episode 1

**Serial 2 – The Deadly Virus**

 **Episode 1 – The Virus of Doom**

 **And now something for the Classic Who fans. Although I think the New Whovians will enjoy it, too...**

* * *

"Oh no, not again," The Doctor muttered when the record player that he had just turned on started to malfunction again. The music stopped and his TARDIS gave out warning sounds. Déjà vu? The Doctor wondered and hoped that he wasn't caught in a time loop and had to repeat his last two days again. Because he would only survive the next four times…

He jumped up and ran over to his console that started throwing sparks into all directions. "I think I could do with a new console surface," he muttered, realising at the same moment that he was alone. He looked at his small computer monitor and noticed that a manual distress call was being transmitted on all short-wave frequencies. "The TARDIS must have picked up the distress signal and automatically altered curse." This time he knew that no one was around.

Five minutes later, the TARDIS arrived – somewhere, and landed. Carefully, the Doctor opened the door. He remembered what happened the last time he received a distress call from Earth and did not want any repetition. But this time he did not end up in the mid of a gang-war although these surroundings did not seem to be any safer. A shrilling alarm tone was to be heard while redly flickering light illuminated the hallway which he found himself in. Curious now, he stepped out and decided to go left, because – why not? He heard people shouting commands in the distance. He walked past heavy metal doors, one of them was open and he sneaked in. It seemed to be a chemistry lab – or had been one until very recently. Cupboard doors were torn out, test tubes and Erlenmeyer flasks were shattered and scattered all over the place and an unpleasant odour was coming from the spilled liquids. Some of the window glasses were fragmented or missing completely, responsible for it had probably been some of the gas bottles that had been thrown out.

The Doctor continued his search into the small office that was separated from the lab by huge glass windows of which one was still intact. In there, the books and folders of the shelves had been torn out and distributed on the floor and table. He sat down at the desk and tapped the computer screen. The computer came back to life and asked for a password. The Doctor had a quick look around and found the password note pinned to one of the books that lay next to the desk calendar – which showed the 34th week of the year 2027. This at least confirmed that he was on Earth and in the 21st century, as the TARDIS had predicted. He typed in the password and waited for the computer to load. Then, he was confronted with an unknown desktop – but on the other hand he hardly knew anything about computer software on Earth, especially not since he had left Earth in the late 70s.

He had barely touched the small logo to the lower left of the screen when he heard an angry voice asking, "What are you doing there?" Alarmed, he turned around in the chair. "Nothing, I just came here and–"

"Just shut up and put your hands where I can see them," the male person said and came closer.

The Doctor raised his arms and noticed that the man was human, probably in his early fifties, wearing a lab coat and pointing a gun at him. He didn't like people pointing guns at him.

"You're coming with me," the scientist decided. "Have you ravaged this lab?"

"No, I'm telling the truth if I say that I have just arrived, and this laboratory already looked like this. Would you mind telling me what's going on here?" he asked and tried to turn around.

As a response he was brutally pushed forwards and reprimanded again to put his hands behind his head or he would be shot. "I've dealt with scum like you before, Primer," the scientist muttered and nudged his back with his gun.

They were taking a staircase to a lower level of the building.

"Would you mind telling me now where I am?"

"I'm pretty sure you know what buildings you break in or did you take a bit more than just helping yourself to Dutch courage, right?"

They had arrived in a laboratory where more people were standing around, lab coats on and guns in their hands. "I found one of them," the scientist, that The Doctor had encountered, shouted.

"Put him in the monkey cage," one of the other scientists proposed. "Such a shame that all the monkeys are gone. He would have been among his friends…"

"There has obviously been a mistake," The Doctor protested but was hardly heard because of the laughter of the scientists.

"I'm not who you think I am. I have not been devastating the laboratories upstairs. I arrived shortly after that!"

But no one was listening. They were rather talking to each other.

"Where are John, Mark and Thomas?" the scientist who had brought The Doctor with him, asked.

"They've run into town. All the car tyres were slashed. They have been very thorough this time."

"We know so far that five monkeys and nine lab rats from the 5th floor have escaped. The rats had been used for the MetaTex experiments, and they're all in different states of the disease but they should be non-contagious."

"They haven't managed to penetrate the security doors to the radioactivity labs. Imagine what damage they could have done there."

Suddenly all automatic doors in this room shut down shortly after another scientist had rushed in. Her lab coat – if you could still call it that – was torn apart and she looked as if she had been running a marathon.

"Sarah, what's up?" one of the other scientists asked.

"It's the gene-enhancement virus…I went upstairs to check on the biology research in the maximum security department and all the bottles in the fridge had been scattered on the floor. And one of the monkeys nearly attacked me. I managed to lock it in the office but I accidentally triggered the security override while doing so." She was out of breath and nearly collapsing. A colleague of hers brought her a bottle of water and she drank half of it immediately. "I only had 90 seconds to get here. Now the doors won't open again. Have you phoned the city's police?"

"The telephone cables are cut and we lost internet connection. We've manually send distress calls with the devices that UNIT installed last year."

"I've received that distress call!" The Doctor shouted. They scientists looked over to his cage. "I've received such a distress signal. In my space ship!"

"Space ship?" the scientist that had brought him here laughed. "What? Are you an alien from outer space?" he mocked.

"I had no idea what was going on here. I was landing in my star ship that looks like a big blue police box."

"I've seen such a box on my way down here," the latest arrived biologist mentioned.

"I had just been discovering the lab when you found me. I have honestly no idea what is going on here. But I am familiar with UNIT. I have worked for them."

There was first silence among the scientist, and then chatter. While they were still talking whether to believe the strange man in the monkey cage, a young man in a dirty lab coat walked over to The Doctor. He was perhaps in his early 30s and looked much more unexperienced than the other scientists.

"A big blue police telephone box, you say?" he asked and cleaned his glasses. Rather a gesture he didn't much think about than an actual attempt to clean his glasses.

The Doctor nodded.

"Then are you The Doctor?"

"Yes, that's me."

"When I was a child," he explained, "there was an invasion of dustbin-like aliens on Earth. Rumours said you saved us."

"It probably were the Daleks and I probably did," The Doctor said. "Would you mind telling me where I am, when I am and what on Earth is happening?" That were probably the questions he was constantly asking himself when travelling.

The young scientist sighed and had a look at his colleagues, who had started again talking about what to do and how not to panic, and seemed to have forgotten about The Doctor.

"The date is 5th November 2027. You're in the Keel Miller Research Facility in Aberdeen, Scotland."

"Keel Miller…that name rings a bell… What exactly is it you are researching about?"

"Mainly biological advance."

"Do you have a department dealing with cybergenetics?"

"I think. Somewhere buried in the cellar. But it's rather small now. Fifty, sixty years ago, cyberengineering was the main focus of Keel Miller Industries. But it lost its charm during the Eugenic Wars in the 1990s. Since then, we have been dedicated to biological technologies in all kinds of directions, but dealing mainly with ways to prolong life."

"A longer life…isn't that what everyone wants?" The Doctor asked sarcastically.

"For me, it doesn't sound too well. More time to do what? Working?" the scientist surprisingly agreed. "In the last few years, we have extended our research onto the first human test subjects. Many people in the city of Aberdeen weren't very happy with that. But do not get me wrong, Doctor. All test subjects on whom we've applied our research had agreed voluntarily. And only very few had unfortunately passed away. And this is not our intent! We do not perform research until the patient dies and then try something else. We do have our ethics code and it is taken very serious," he defended his work. "But some unfortunate accidents could not be avoided."

He paused, then continued. "In the last few months, an extremist group calling themselves Human Prime, pretending to fight for human rights, has been formed. They say that our work is unethical and should stop immediately. What they don't consider is that we also were the ones that developed a vaccine for the latest infection, or that we are constantly helping to improve the people's life. Nevertheless, in the past few months, attacks have occurred. Firstly, they had demonstrated, then they threatened us. Some scientists were mugged or their homes were broken in. We also had burglars in here, but they had never come far…until today. It was an organised troop of twenty, thirty people.

They have come with knives and guns this time, and we, of course, were unprepared. They attacked around six p.m., when most workers had already gone home. They threatened us, they destroyed our equipment, they released test subjects – all animals, and we don't treat them badly either. I'm pretty sure our rats thrive in comparison to the rats in the sewers close to the sea. And now it seems they have also accidentally released a virus. As you've heard, we sent some people into the town to warn the inhabitants, but if we don't get immediate support from the police, UNIT or Torchwood, we might see Aberdeen going extinct in the next few days. And if the virus is really out there, it will be very hard to keep it in town…"

"I don't have a doctorate degree in Biology or Medicine, but I am a Doctor after all. I know a lot about cell biology and genetic enhancement. If you explain the details to me, I might be able to help," The Doctor offered. He read the panic in the face of the young scientist.

"It had already gone too far, Doctor. We cannot apprehend the virus anymore, it is on its way into town."

"How exactly does this virus work, Dr…?"

"My name's Chesterfield. Brian Chesterfield. I'm a Doctor in the field of Cell Apoptosis. I have also been working on the virus project so I might give you a short summary."

Before he could continue, he was interrupted by the biologist without the lab coat. The others had all kept theirs on. Perhaps as a sign of belonging, or because they loved their work, or just to tell them apart from the terrorist group.

"What are you telling him?" she asked.

"I think he is telling the truth when saying that he has nothing to do with the attack," Dr Chesterfield said. "I think he might be able to help us. He claims that he has worked for UNIT once."

"And you believe him?" she mocked him.

"I think that he doesn't look like the activists we've encountered before and with all the damage done, what is there left for him to destroy?"

The female biologist seemed to think for a while and then began to nod. "Let him out of the cage, but keep an eye on him. If he has anything useful to say, tell us. We're continuing with our damage report. The police wants to know every little detail when they come here and we need to be prepared." With that, she left again, not before giving her colleague the keys.

The young scientist freed The Doctor and they sat down on chairs far away from the others. "As I said," he began to explain, "We're also doing research on prolonging cell life. We have started with many different substances, but lately we have come up with a promising substance that we call 'Regenerator' – at least, we did so in the beginning. By now, we have renamed it as 'the virus' because its newest version fastens metabolism and cell regeneration. It enhances the cell, yes, but it also makes it die much earlier. In the beginning, improved mutation looked very promising and we started experiments with humans." He swallowed and The Doctor noticed that this was a difficult topic for him.

"It enhanced the humans, but 'the virus' attacked all cells, not only the once we wanted the affect to apply to. It resulted in the test subjects aging ten years per day. The first test person died, the second one has now reached the age of 70. We could save the second person because – after the first failure – we had programmed a self-destruction program into the virus. The virus destroys itself automatically after five days. In addition to that, the virus can only survive five minutes in the air. It can only be transmitted from human to human."

"But if this virus now gets into town – and even if it destroys itself after five days since its release from the test tubes – it kills or ages the population," The Doctor realised.

"Exactly. We had done some statistics in the case of an accident. I still can't believe that this will all come true now: But thousands of people in Aberdeen city will die! And about 80% of the survivors will be aged 70 or older." He leaned back and had a look outside the window. "I wonder if John, Mark and Thomas have made it into the city to warn the people. But with the monkeys and rats escaped, and probably being infected with the virus, we should put Aberdeenshire completely under quarantine."

Dr John Hemingway, Dr Mark Shire and Professor Thomas Johnson were at that time being still stomping through the foot-high snow masses that have covered the whole landscape. With all cars unusable, the descent from the facility to the marge of the city would take one and a half hour under perfect conditions, and at least two hours considering the snow and the occasional snowstorms.

None of them were talking. It would be a waste of energy and it was obvious how slow they progressed: They could clearly see the lights of the city which did not seem to get any nearer, independent on how long they walked.

Suddenly, Dr Shire stopped.

"What is it, Mark?" Dr Hemingway wanted to know. He, too, stared into the forest to the right of them.

"Do you see that?" Dr Shire asked and pointed to a weak light about hundred meters away from them.

"Perhaps a glow worm," Dr Hemingway suggested.

"It's too big," Professor Johnson now intervened and started walking into that direction, but was held back by his colleague Dr Shire. "We should continue our walk. We don't have time to argue about things like this."

"Look, it's moving towards us," Dr Hemingway noticed. "Is that…is that one of the fluorescing apes from our genetic department?"

The monkey was coming nearer but fell down into the snow a few meters away from the scientists who were now interested enough to move closer. "It is," Professor Johnson recognised. "That's Hunter, the oldest of our test subjects. Do you think the activists have let them free?"

"I would say they freed everything they could find," Dr Hemingway muttered and kneed besides the monkey. "Something doesn't seem to be right with him. Shouldn't he be rather coldness-resisting?" He felt his pulse. "His heartbeat is too slow."

"We can't do anything for him now. We have to keep going," the Professor urged.

Dr Hemingway nodded and stroked the monkey's fur. "We'll help you," he murmured and then followed his colleagues further down the hill and towards the city.

"Some of the test animals had been injected with deadly viruses, hadn't they?" Dr Shire, who was a chemist, and did not have much to do with virus and vaccination research, asked.

"Yes, but I think all these virus versions tested in monkeys is not contagious for humans. The only contagious ones were in the cellar where the activists had not broken in," Professor Johnson replied.

"You're forgetting about 'the virus'," Dr Hemingway reminded him.

"The genetic enhancement drug?"

"Yes, but they had been testing rats and I think even fish. Don't ask me why. There's no way this monkey could have come into contact with it."

How little did he know that the three of them were already transporting the age fastening virus straight into the town of Aberdeen…

* * *

 **Don't forget to leave a review.**


	5. Serial 2 - Episode 2

**Episode 2 – …and locked!**

"Oh no," Professor Johnson said. "There's another one! They can't have all escaped."

The three scientists, who hadn't spoken in over twenty minutes, changed their way towards the silently sitting chimpanzee who fluoresced brightly in the dark night.

"We should really go on and deal with this problem later," Dr Hemingway said.

"Maybe we should split up. Two continue towards the town to warn the people and one of us has a look what is up with this monkey?"

Dr Hemingway and Dr Shire nodded. "I'll stay here," Dr Hemingway nodded. "But hurry. We need to inform the people. And think of the others in the facility!"

Dr Hemingway kneed down next to the chimpanzee while his colleagues continued walking towards Aberdeen city. He touched the monkey whose skin was warmer than it should be. Far warmer than the fur of the other monkey. Probably the coldness-resistance worked better for this one. But something did not seem right. He moved around the chimpanzee and tried to see something in the moonlight that was shining down and being reflected by the snow.

Dr Hemingway touched the monkey's face and felt how dead skin cells pelt off easily. He glided his hand again through the fur and had a bunch of hairs and cells in his hand. Enhanced cell apoptosis, he thought. This can only be a result of… He shook his head; this couldn't be. The virus couldn't have simply jumped onto this monkey. But there had been such a chaos in the facility, it shouldn't have been a surprise to him that diseases have left their laboratories in suitable carriers – like this monkey. But that would mean – that he was infected. And his colleagues, too. And they were walking straight towards the city. He needed to stop them before they arrived. Driven by cold sweat running down his forehead, he started sprinting…

"Shouldn't we be rather working on a way to open these doors than sitting in here and thinking about everything that could have gone wrong? Shouldn't we take a look outside and see for ourselves what exactly has gone wrong?" Dr Chesterfield asked. He and The Doctor had been integrated into the group of scientists discussing the damage report.

"There is no way to open this door without the necessary security override. We're on emergency power and even if we could start the computers in here, we would need the okay from either UNIT or the local police – which we can't get because we have no internet," another scientist said.

"Tell me more about the virus," The Doctor asked. "How does this artificial and premature apoptosis work?"

One of the biologist, who had been working on this experiment, as the Doctor had found out, took his glasses, cleaned them and put them back on his nose, to then explain: "Cells usually commit suicide after a certain amount of time. Viruses are quite different, but I don't think this is the right time for a lecture in virology. However, we have managed to install an apoptosis mechanism into the virus, because, technically speaking, it is not a virus but rather a cell itself. It just has some features of a virus…"

"Dr Magnussen!" Someone else interrupted to make the biologist come to the point.

"After five days, the virus so-to-say notices that its time has come and destroys itself."

"Haven't you tried destroying this virus early, before the five days were up?"

"You mean if we have trained the situation of an outbreak? Yes, we have, Doctor. The problem is that neither can we reach our necessary equipment, nor is it functional." He gave a side-glance to Dr Sampson, who had been the one informing them all about the outbreak in the first place.

She nodded. "If a highly energetic frequency is transmitted, let's say X-rays with a defined wavelength, the virus is excited into a state where it believes that it has already lived five days and it destroys itself – before its time."

"And your equipment is broken?" The Doctor asked.

"Yes."

"Although…" Dr Magnussen said. "We have some satellite dishes on the rooftop. If we could send this frequency towards the town…"

"We don't have the equipment to produce energy waves…"

"But perhaps I do," The Doctor suddenly said. "I could have a look at the door," he added and walked over to the door through which he had come in.

"Even if you could open it, Doctor," someone yelled, "the frequencies locking the doors are changing every second attempt. And overwriting this algorithm would take days."

The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver. He noticed how Chesterfield had joined him. "What is this?" he asked.

"A sonic screwdriver, Chester…Chesterman?"

"Chesterfield!"

"Ah, right," The Doctor said and the door slid aside. "My screwdriver seems to have found the right frequency. If your colleague is right, I might be able to open one other door." He had to shout the last words because a new alarm had gone off, informing that a door had been open despite internal lock-down.

"This is my sonic screwdriver," he then said to everyone. "I could program it to transmit exactly the frequency you need."

"You wouldn't get past a third door," Dr Magnussen reminded him.

"But if we open the door to our left, we can enter the chemistry lab and have a look if we find some reactive substances to bomb our way free," Dr Chesterfield suggested.

"This is ridiculous," Dr Sampson said and burst into sarcastic laughter.

"It's worth a try," The Doctor showed the optimist and asked for the frequency. He was just checking whether his screwdriver could meet the conditions, when the door suddenly closed behind them.

"Damn emergency overwrite," Dr Chesterfield cursed. He was locked in with The Doctor in the hallway while the other scientists were still in the lab.

"Now we can either go forwards to the chemistry lab, or we can re-open this door and wait with the others for rescue," The Doctor said.

"No, we can't go back. You can open two doors before the frequency changes, but not the same door. Our only chance is to go on."

"That's what I call spirit," The Doctor smiled and opened the next door.

"Oh no," Chesterfield said as soon as they had passed. The door to the chemistry lab was open but a foul smell arose from in there. "Butyric acid! I hate that stuff," he said and tried to breathe with his mouth instead of his nose. The closer they came to the laboratory, the worse became the smell. They held their arms in front of their faces but it was still unbearable. They managed to stay for two minutes in the lab without finding anything of use. Most bottles had been smashed and they had to pay careful attention where to step. There were undefinable puddles on the floor, some of them developing dangerously looking vapours. They came out coughing again but could only walk ten meters until they encountered the locked door through which they had come in.

"I saw a lot of substances whose application in this facility I do not want to question, but nothing seemed to be inflammable or explosive enough," The Doctor said while gasping for air.

"I saw 40% hydrofluoric acid and six molar sulphuric acid, but it's nothing we could use against those doors. Doctor, I think we've locked ourselves in. We have no other possibility than to wait for the police rescue, just as everybody else. Just that we'll soon get serious breathing problems."

"Some of the windows had already been broken, but even if we destroy all of it, the odour will diffuse into every direction, hence also into the hallway." The Doctor looked around. The red flickering light illuminated the devastated corridor. Glass fragments, deadly looking chemical puddles and the pieces of a former cupboard were decorating the floor. They were trapped.

"As we have nothing to do anyway, can you tell me something about Keel Miller Industries, Dr Chester…something?" The Doctor asked. "I have heard the name before, I think it was lifetimes ago, even on a different planet…" He thought about it. He has never been in a facility of Keel Miller before, but he must have encountered the name somewhere.

"Chesterfield. Well, there's not much to tell. Keel Miller Industries in Scotland was founded in the early 1970s by the Belgian-Spanish-English scientist Keel Miller."

"And you coincidentally know all that?"

"I gave guided tours through our facility for children…before the attacks started. In the beginning, Keel Miller Industries dealt with engineering and bioengineering. The goal were at first bio-implants, for example an artificial hip or knee. That's of course no problem nowadays. Then, they researched on cyber-attachments to the body. That did not go well and due to an incident with Torchwood, Keel Miller Industries was nearly completely destroyed. No one knows what really happened that night. But it was 1990 and everything was classified by Torchwood. I had not even been born then, so don't ask me. However, Keel Miller Industries became the Keel Miller Research Facility and started projects on enhancing the human himself, without the necessity of implants or visible technology. This played a role in the Eugenic Wars, and since then we're making slower progress due to intensified security measurements and UNIT is having a close look on our development."

"This sounds all really interesting. I'm pretty sure I've stumbled across the word 'Keel Miller' before, but I don't think it was on Earth," The Doctor said.

"But this doesn't bring us any further regarding our current problem," Dr Chesterfield said.

Unfortunately, he seemed to be right. They were still trapped in the corridor and they had no hope in escaping. That was, until the door behind them opened.


	6. Serial 2 - Episode 3

**Episode 3 – Draining the Sonic**

Amazed, The Doctor and Dr Chesterfield turned around. There was a girl in her mid-twenties standing with a small device in her hand that had allowed her to open that door. She was tall and tan, looked South-European and had long, a bit curly dark-brown hair. She didn't look surprised at all to see the two men trapped in this corridor.

"Aleja, I'm so glad to see you!" Dr Chesterfield said relieved. "Doctor, this is Aleja Moihd. She's a student writing her Master's thesis in our facility. Aleja, this is The Doctor."

"Nice to meet you. But we should leave. I was trapped upstairs in the engineering laboratories and I spent the last few hours building this device to open the doors," she explained. "Unfortunately, the batteries are nearly drained."

"I think I can fix this. Let me have a look." Aleja handed The Doctor her device that consisted of metal stripes and cables fixed with adhesive tape. He took out his screwdriver and transmitted some power from his screwdriver into the device. "You built it yourself?"

"Yes. It adjusts to the changing frequencies of the doors. I had access to one of the security computers in the labs and programmed the same rotating algorithm into the device."

"You're an engineering student?"

"Actually a biology student. But I'm doing my research in one of the bioengineering sections upstairs and the engineers have explained me quite a lot in the past two months," she said. Then she turned to Dr Chesterfield. "What about the others? I was alone in the bioengineering labs when the attacks happened. I hid while the Human Prime activists destroyed the labs and when I dared to take a look outside the lab, I didn't get far because the security doors shut down. I was on my way down using this device and I was so glad to hear voices. For some minutes I feared I would be the only survivor."

"Dr Sampson initiated the lock-down. It seems 'the virus' has broken out. And probably some escaped monkeys are bringing the virus towards the city. Three of us are already on their way to warn the people. Telephone cables are cut and we have no internet. The Doctor was the first to pick up our manual distress signal," Dr Chesterfield explained.

"And we should keep moving," The Doctor said and handed Aleja her device back. "We're on the way to the rooftop. The virus has one weakness, and that is-"

"High-energy waves. How do you want to emit the right frequency?"

He was surprised at how good the student was. "This is a sonic screwdriver. I have programmed the required frequency pattern into it. I just have to attach it somehow to the satellite dishes on the rooftop."

"That should be possible. I have accompanied one of the maintenance workers who repaired one of the dishes two weeks ago," she agreed. She turned around and opened again the door through which they had come in. "We should take the same way I took when coming down here. I've seen that there's a small fire on the 4th floor that we should definitely avoid. The sprinkler system above the fire doesn't work, but the others do to contain the fire to one of the labs. Everything else seems to have been destroyed. The activists did a good job this time," she told when they were walking towards a staircase. "And you're a Doctor of what? I haven't seen you here before."

"Oh, I don't work here. I've…it's complicated."

"We have time. And if we die here, I promise to take everything you tell me to my grave."

"You're taking all this a bit light-hearted. Like an adventure that's going to end well," The Doctor noted.

"I'm just taking life as it comes. Would panic do us any good now?" she replied. "You still haven't told me what kind of a Doctor you are? Medical?"

"Kind of…everything," The Doctor said and helped opening a door that got stuck. "How many doors do we have to pass?"

"Quite a lot. It's part of the fire containment system. The doors seal off nearly every single laboratory for itself so that a fire couldn't grow. Just as it is happening on the 4th floor. We can use the staircase up to the fifth floor, but when leaving the bioengineering lab I saw that the stairs to the roof had been flooded with chemicals. I've had a closer look and we'll have to take a rheological additive from the chemistry lab on the 4th floor upstairs," she explained.

The Doctor was still surprised on how easy the young scientist seemed to take the situation. They had just climbed up the stairs to the 4th floor and opened a door when The Doctor saw why Aleja had tried to come to the lower levels. Plants, bottles, computers, everything smashed and scattered on the floor of the corridor. No window was intact anymore. He could smell already the penetrative malodour of the fire.

"Do you know what exactly is burning?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I think it's a material science lab over there, but I don't know. But the doors are sealing off the fire and some of the sprinklers work, as I said, so it shouldn't become too dangerous. We need to go this way." She led the team to the lab nearby.

The Doctor followed but looked her up and down. She seemed to keep a cool head despite the nerve-stretching situation and he admired it. But it also made him wonder whether she was perhaps a sociopath, or if she had something to hide. Otherwise, she had been far too nice to not care for other people and she wouldn't have come to help them. However, there was something about her that made the Doctor curious. Perhaps her face… He was sure that he has seen her before…and have never seen her at the same time. Perhaps she just possessed a striking similarity with someone who The Doctor believed dead…or perhaps he was just becoming paranoid and he began seeing ghosts. He made a mental note for thinking about this later.

"I've done some work here," Dr Chesterfield said. "We should find the additives in a shelf in the storage room behind the office." Together they walked through the lab that looked as if a catastrophe had happened. Test tubes, flasks, Bunsen-burners, nothing was in order. The cupboards had been opened and everything had been torn out.

"The activists were quite angry with you, weren't they?" The Doctor asked.

"They're mostly uneducated people looking for a reason to become violent or environmental freaks thinking that we're torturing people up here," Aleja explained. "If they actually knew that we aren't creating any Frankensteins or Khans here, they'd leave us alone."

They passed the chemistry lab. Dr Chesterfield winced when a gas cartridge one the desk next to them exploded. "We need to get out of this building. It's only a matter of time until everything blows up." He was more frightened than he wanted to admit. Despite the presence of The Doctor. He was his childhood hero, he had been the one to make the Daleks go away. Although he had looked quite different back then, just one glimpse at the mighty alien that rescued all people on Earth had been enough for him to give him strength – and to study sciences. Since then, his wish had always been to become a Doctor. And now he was, and even met the reason for whom he was here now. Although he could never tell The Doctor how much he had meant to him without embarrassing himself.

"Don't worry, Chesterton, we're as good as out of here," The Doctor reassured.

"My name is Chesterfield."

"Over here," Aleja said and hurried towards the metal door. She typed in a security code and entered. After browsing some shelves, she picked up two bottles containing some sort of powder. "That should make the acids less harmful."

Together they returned to the corridor and the stairs. Aleja opened the first bottle and poured the content on the puddles. These started steaming and fizzing. After half a minute, she added the second bottle. "It should be safe enough to walk through. I do not recommend bathing in it though…and your shoes may dissolve within the next half hour," she said and tried it out first.

"Doctor, you were wrong. I will be quite glad when we get out of here," she mentioned when walking further upstairs. She paused on the upper step. "The door to the roof is locked. It's not a security door. I think it has been blocked accidentally while someone was trying to get inside."

"Let me have a look," The Doctor said and joined her. He sonic-ed the door until it unlocked. Dr Chesterton pushed the door open and climbed outside.

It was early morning, perhaps one or two a clock, but the moon shone brightly and lit up the whole scene. He smelled the odour of burning chemicals and tyres, as well as he felt the light breeze that made the night cool. The Doctor and Aleja followed him.

"The satellite dishes are over there," Aleja pointed towards the other end of the roof.

"Stop right there!" a thrilling voice suddenly said behind them. They all turned around and stumbled backwards at the sight of an armed man in black clothes. "Who are you?"

"Who are you, is the question here, isn't it?" The Doctor asked.

"He's obviously one of the activists," Dr Chesterfield said. He immediately recognised the green button at his pullover which made him a member of Human Prime. "You locked yourself out, didn't you? Typical for you people. You can cause nothing but trouble."

"Shut up!" the man shouted. "Yes, I locked myself up here and you'll guide me out of this hell."

"The assault is long over," The Doctor explained. "All doors have been locked in the building and there're fires."

"Then guide me out of here!"

"Why should we?" Dr Chesterfield asked rebelliously.

"Because I am pointing a damn gun at you!"

"Let's just talk," The Doctor proposed and signalled him to stay calm. "All your men are back into the city. We fear that a virus has broken out and that your friends are bringing it straight into town. We're here to stop this virus from spreading, but we need to get to the satellite dishes and transmit a certain radio frequency."

"Rubbish!" the activist shouted. "Get me out of here, immediately."

"The door is still open," Aleja said.

"But you won't get far," Dr Chesterfield added.

"Let us do our job and then we'll get out of here all together," The Doctor proposed. "We just have to go to the satellite dishes and connect my screwdriver to it."

"That sounds ridiculous."

"Well, it does, but it certainly isn't."

"If you had not been experimenting with dangerous stuff like that, we would not be in danger," the Human Prime disciple shouted.

"This 'virus' could have saved many people's life. It just wasn't ready yet," Aleja explained. The Doctor noticed rage in her voice, but she was able to contain it. He glanced at her. Her face displayed a mixture of anger and fear. He was glad that she did not seem to be an emotionless sociopath after all. Perhaps the things she witnessed had made her not realise what was actually going on and she was slowly waking up and becoming aware of the danger they were in.

"You've taken enough lives. With all your inhuman and disgusting experiments!"

"These experiments were being conducted to help people. Of course there were accidents, but those cannot be avoided when researching in natural sciences." Dr Chesterfield's voice already sounded like he was begging for his life.

The more the scientists tried to reason with the activist, the angrier he became.

"Shut up! Shut up, all of you," he shouted and seemed to think about what to do.

"Please, let us help the people in the town and let us help you," The Doctor said calmly.

It took a few seconds for the activist to react. "You cannot help me! I do not want help from you!" he yelled and started shooting wildly in their directions.

The Doctor ran aside, Dr Chesterfield threw himself to the ground and Aleja ducked and crawled out of range. The moment the activist ran out of bullets, Aleja jumped up and threw herself onto him. The Doctor reacted quickly and grabbed the gun before the unknown man could reload it. Aleja hit him hard on his head, but was kicked into the stomach which made her fall backwards.

The Doctor stepped forwards and reached out his hand. He was too fast for the activist to react and applied the neck grip he had once learnt on the planet Vulcan to knock him out. The man dropped onto the floor and lost consciousness immediately.

"Are you alright?" The Doctor asked and helped Aleja up. She nodded but looked over to Dr Chesterfield. He had not gotten up since the shooting.


	7. Serial 2 - Episode 4

**Episode 4 – An Unexpected Journey**

The Doctor and Aleja ran over to him. The bioengineer held his hands on a wound in his chest.

Aleja removed her lab coat and pressed it against the wound to reduce the blood flow. "It's probably right next to the heart," she muttered. "It's a wonder that no main artery or vain has been hit." She then turned to The Doctor. "Go and do whatever you have to do to destroy the virus! The more time we lose, the older the affected people get."

"I'm pretty sure the scientists who we had sent off have reached the city by now and transmitted the virus," Dr Chesterfield moaned.

"Don't talk," Aleja said and pressed her blood-soaked lab coat firmer onto his chest. "Go!" she said one more time.

The Doctor nodded and hurried towards the satellite dishes. He had to be careful, the roof was icy and he nearly slipped twice. If he glided off the rooftop, a 15 meter fall awaited him. He stopped beneath the biggest satellite dish and cowered down. It was cold and his fingers felt as if they had frozen. He fumbled his screwdriver out of his pocket and took longer than he wanted to find the right setting. It started emitting the electromagnetic waves. He then tore out some cables of the satellite dish and connected these to his screwdriver. He hoped it worked, and h returned as fast as he could to Aleja and Dr Chesterfield. When he arrived, Aleja looked up and it was the first time he recognised sadness in her eyes. She seemed calm, but nothing than sad. Probably he had judged her wrongly.

"He wanted me to tell you that his name was Chesterfield…" she said.

He nodded and silently kneed down beside her. He could never get names right, he knew that.

"Did you manage to transmit waves of the right wavelength?" she asked.

"Yes. These should make the virus vibrate and kill it." He didn't know what else to say. Silently, they regarded Dr Chesterfield's body. Aleja hadn't let go of his hand yet, so The Doctor took hers and wiped away a tear that ran down her cheek. They sat there until they heard police sirens and the fire brigade had stormed the building to rescue the last scientists. The Doctor managed to sneak out of sight while the two firemen on the 4th floor regarded Aleja's bloody chin. He looked around and saw a devastation he had only rarely seen before. The company would have to close, that was for sure. He walked into his phone box and disappeared as quickly as he could. Sitting in his old chair again, regarding the book next to him, he started to think… Should he really have disappeared like that? Or should he return and tell the authorities what he had witnessed? Aleja no doubt would tell them about him. She would tell UNIT about him…and they'd know it was him, The Doctor, no other Doctor.

But what would happen to Aleja? She had seemed like a really nice girl, who had just lost her internship for her Master's thesis. She would have to find a new work, a new thesis and prolong her studies.

But he had enough to do on his own. Shortly after having returned to the TARDIS, he had received a notification from the Gallifreyan news agency. He read their posts frequently but this one had been sent on all common frequencies: The Timelords have positioned a fleet in the Seventh System – which the Daleks might see as a declaration of war, especially after the latest tensions that had been growing…

It had taken The Doctor some time to locate Aleja Moihd but after questioning some people in the city he found out that she had returned to the RG-University in Aberdeen. It was a sunny, but very cold afternoon when the TARDIS landed on the campus outside the Health and Life building. He remembered being here thirty years ago and snow had been very rare in this region but now it was common during the three winter months. The university was nearly deserted, it was six p.m., students and lecturers and staff had gone home already. But something told him he might find her here. The TARDIS had been sure of it and he wouldn't question her, would he?

He took the stairs to the sixth floor and looked for the biology labs. The only one where the light was still lit was also the one where he found the young student. He knocked and entered the office next to the lab.

"Remember me?" he asked when she looked up.

Her face went pale and displayed total surprise. She needed a few seconds to find the right words. "Doctor," she muttered and raised an eyebrow. She waved her hand to a chair and he sat down. "I didn't expect to see you. The guys from UNIT told me that I probably would never meet you again…"

"You told them everything?"

"Of course, I had to. They thank you a lot for your effort, Doctor."

The Doctor nodded, and then tried to change subject: "What is it you're doing?"

"I'm saving all the data I could rescue from my project onto the university computers. Luckily the data is complete, but my research is destroyed."

"So what are you going to do now?"

"My professor said it's okay if I analyse the data I have gathered by now. It should be enough for a thesis. And if I were interested in continuing my studies in this direction, he offered me to join a PhD program in six months," she answered smilingly.

Good luck within bad luck. "May I have a look at your research?" the Doctor asked.

She nodded and opened the Excel sheet including her data and notes. "This facility of Keel Miller Research here in Aberdeen deals with…dealt with prolonging human life, curing diseases and altering the rate of cell proliferation. My topic was synthetic cell birth," she explained. "It's actually biophysics. I analysed a method of 'charging' cells with energy and hence triggering what I call a full 'regeneration' of cells. The cells convert back to an earlier state of life and kind of gain a new life-cycle. A problem – or rather an interesting side effect – I found is that this has an influence in the nucleus DNA while the mitochondrial DNA does not change. This means–"

"That the person whose cells regenerate would get a different physical appearance," The Doctor concluded.

"The personality might change as well but I don't know what effect it would have on the brain itself as brain cells are quite different to skin cells. But yes…" She looked at The Doctor enquiring. "You aren't a Doctor in Biology, are you?"

"No, I'm not…but I am quite familiar with the topic of regeneration in biophysics," he said and studied her measuring data. "What cells did you use?"

"Skin and blood cells, as well as tissue from orang-utans and chimpanzees, and I had just started my first batch of human cells when…well, when the attack happened."

"And you came up with all this on your own?" he wanted to know. Her research was too much for a scientist on Earth, especially for one so young like her. What she had found out – or rather what she was about to find out – would advance human genetics by over a century – and this two centuries too early. He eyeballed her but found nothing that would make him suspect anything. She definitely looked human, but was she? Could she be from another, more advanced planet? There were thousands of those out there. Or had someone proposed this topic to her? Perhaps she was doing research for someone else?

"Yes. When I finished my Bachelor, I wanted to specialise in Bioengineering. I chose those modules in my Postgraduate studies and found a professor who accepted my thesis. I had read about human engineering in the Eugenic Wars. I never want to do something that drastic, so I chose this topic. I find Thermodynamics quite interesting and didn't see a problem in combining the conservation principles of energy with applied biology."

He nodded. Interesting, he thought. Quite interesting. Perhaps he would find out more when he got to know her better. Perhaps she would tell him more, about her, her work and her goals…he needed her to travel with him.

"So all you have to do is interpreting your data?"

"Yes, for the next few weeks. Then I'll complete my thesis and do a colloquium to finish my Postgraduate studies. What are you going to do now, Doctor?"

"Oh, just travelling…"

"Earth?"

"The universe."

She laughed.

"UNIT told you I'm an alien who's travelling through space and time, so why do you laugh?" he asked curiously.

"UNIT told me you were a weird man with a police box?" she replied confused.

"Would you accompany a weird man with a police box?"

"Accompany you where?" She hesitated.

"The universe," he answered with a smile. "I could show you places you've never dreamed of. I can show you biological phenomena of flora and fauna of different planets…!"

She still hesitated. She seemed to be unsure whether to take him seriously.

"Come with me," The Doctor said and stood up. He walked out of the door and heard Aleja behind him shutting down the computer and following him. "Here's my police box," he said when they were outside in the hallway. "It's actually a spaceship."

"And you can also travel through time with it?"

"Exactly," he said and opened the door. "Go in and have a look for yourself." He followed her inside.

"It's…bigger on the inside…" she muttered and walked around in the huge room that reminded one on a living room, just with science fiction elements in it.

"Have you ever heard…of a planet called Cardassia?" The Doctor asked and programmed the data. "It's hot and possesses a lot of deserts, but some parts of it are more humid and are rich of a huge biodiversity of planets." He started the TARDIS. "I once knew an extraordinary tailor who had been a gardener and he explained to me the properties of different healing plants on his planet…do you want to see it for yourself?"

* * *

 **Please tell me what you think. Even when you are not logged-in you can post a review.  
**


	8. Serial 3 - Episode 1

**Serial 3 – Aftermath**

 **Episode 1 – Insurrection**

 **Information:** The Star Trek series Deep Space Nine deals with the many events that occur on the space station Deep Space Nine which is allocated next to the planet Bajor and a  wormhole that connects the Alpha Quadrant – where the humans and many other species live – with the Gamma Quadrant.

"Gul" is a rank in the Cardassian military which equals a 'Commander' in Starfleet.

Elim Garak has become an ambassador to the Cardassian Union after the Dominion War. He had previously been a spy, a gardener and a tailor…or just an undercover agent…or had he actually been just a tailor all along?

The rest is explained within the story ;)

* * *

When the TARDIS landed, Aleja couldn't believe that she was now supposed to be on a different planet. She looked at The Doctor for reassurance. "Come on, take a look outside," he asked and waited for her to run to the door.

She pushed open the heavy doors which seemed to be simply wooden doors from the outside. "Damn, it is hot here," was the first thing she exclaimed. A warm breeze made her curly hair flatter in the wind. "We're…in a desert," she then noted and walked a few steps through the hot sand. It looked like on Earth, yellow-brown sand that was moving by the wind. I'm pretty sure my boots will soon be filled with that sand, she thought when she looked around. Nothing but sand dunes. She walked around the TARDIS and saw huge buildings perhaps one hundred meter away from them. It was a whole city build in the middle of a desert.

"It's Lakertia City," The Doctor explained. She hadn't noticed that he had followed her. "Its population was over five million before the war. There had been many farmers at the Southern side of the city where the land is rather steppe or semi-desert."

"After the war?" Aleja asked and they began walking towards the gates of the brown-stone wall that encircled the town.

"We've landed in the late 24th century. The United Federation of Planets has been formed over two centuries ago, a coalition of humans, Vulcans and many other species. Several years ago, they ended the Cardassian occupation on Bajor-"

"Wait – we're on Cardassia?"

"On Cardassia IV, yes."

"And the Cardassians had invaded Bajor and occupied it?"

"Yes, for over 50 years. But the Federation ended this occupation. The Cardassian outpost, a space station called Deep Space Nine was taken over by the Federation. They made contact with the Dominion, an alliance of different species based in the Gamma Quadrant – we're here in the Alpha Quadrant of the galaxy, by the way – whose goal is it to conquer new parts of the galaxy. With an aim like that, a war could not be avoided: The Cardassian and Breen became part of the mighty Dominion and the Federation could only defeat them with the help of the Romulans and Klingons, and in the final battle also with some members of the Cardassian resistance. After the so-called 'Dominion War', the Alpha Quadrant lies in ruins: Many cities have been destroyed, countless soldiers and civilians died unnecessary deaths and whole planets have burnt. Although the Cardassians are a very proud race, not only their main planet Cardassia Prime, but also the rest of their territory is suffering: In the final moments of the War, the Dominion – having been betrayed by the Cardassians – had ordered the destruction of every building and the death of every citizen that the Dominion's Jem Hadar soldiers could find. Now, in the year 2377, civil wars are making it nearly impossible for the temporary government to find peace and for the Federation to bring help and food supplies."

"You're sounding like a travel guide explaining to me the main sights of a town. It is horrible what happened here," Aleja said and looked around. "Have you been in this part of the galaxy…I mean, during the war?"

"Only once or twice. There's so much to the universe to discover. Other centuries, other galaxies…"

"Why now?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Why have you landed here now?" Aleja asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "It just crossed my mind. I never plan going anywhere specific…I'm only wandering about…" He tried to avoid eye contact with her. He couldn't tell her that he wanted to take a close look at a planet after war. He could never imagine a destruction like that. Five million people had lived here, in the main capital of the planet. Now, less than five hundred thousand were left. How fast it had been. Three, four years perhaps. Many had fled, nearly all men had gone to war and never returned, and then there had been the 'final killings'. After the word had spread that a resistance had been formed. And after the war, a virus had done the rest. Would Gallifrey fall like this as well? Would Acardia's population one day be diminished to a few hundred thousand? If Arcadia fell, the Timelords would be lost. It was their main city, their second biggest one. It had the best defence system, it was prepared best. And still a war seemed hopeless. There was never a winner in a war. Everyone loses, one way or the other.

They passed the main gate. The Cardassian soldiers examined them from the distance, but didn't seem alarmed. Aleja tried to look at them not to obtrusively. She has never seen aliens before – at least she believed that. Cardassians had grey skin and their scales reminded her on reptiles. Regarding the hot and humid air that made her sweat like a pig it was no surprise that these Cardassians had adapted to the environment. These scale-shaped ridges formed their chin and were present above the eyes – instead of eyebrows. The two guards had dark brown hair that was combed backwards. Their uniforms was also grey – though a darker tone.

The building they walked by were also grey-brown, and their range in colour everything but extensive. Most buildings looked old and abandoned, and there was hardly any wall where you could not see missing stone or flaked off varnish.

"The people's main goal is it to get enough to eat and to nourish and educate their children. But they're also trying to restore the buildings – though it's not a priority," The Doctor explained.

"But where is everyone?" Aleja wondered aloud. Her questions should not stay unanswered for a long time. When they went around the corner, they spotted a gathering of perhaps a few hundred people on a market place. The Doctor and Aleja came closer and noticed that those people seemed to be protesting against something. They were shouting, some of them throwing bottles or unidentifiable vegetables towards a building that also looked quite damaged and whose windows had been temporarily repaired by force fields that lightened up in orange when they were hit by an object.

"What are they protesting against?" Aleja asked.

"Probably against help from the Federation."

"But they need help, don't they?"

"The Cardassians are a proud people. They've played the role of the invaders for a very long time before becoming invaded themselves. Of course, they do need food and medical supplies but they fear to become dependent from the Federation. They don't want their intervention. They don't want their principles, their morals and their government. They see no difference between the Federation and the Dominion," The Doctor said and walked towards the building. Guards were positioned at every door.

He pointed to a hole in the building where once a door had been. It seemed to have been bombed away. "I'd like to have a look inside the building," he whispered.

"They're never going to let us in," she replied but then saw something golden shimmering in his hand. It were two keys with necklaces.

"Perception filters," he explained.

"I think it's rather unproductive that you have to explain to me every second word of yours," Aleja said and folded her arms.

The Doctor sighed. The last companion hadn't even gotten to the explaining part. She had turned him down after an intensive kiss. "It does not make us invisible but other people won't notice us. We can slip by these guards easily."

"They just look past us?"

"Yes, as soon as they spot us, they just turn their heads without noticing. It's…a very complicated piece of technology."

"It contains telepathic interference, doesn't it?"

"As I said, it's quite complicated," he answered and put one key-necklace around her neck. "Follow me unobtrusively," he instructed and walked self-confidently towards the guards.

Aleja shrugged and followed him. After what she had heard from him, he was a mad man. So what could possibly go wrong? Hence she was really surprised when they passed the guards without further notice. These Cardassians just continued looking at the protesting crowd which did not dare to come too close to the armed soldiers. They probably remember what happened to civilians encountering armed men during war, Aleja thought and focused on the inside. They were standing in a long corridor whose wall-lights were flickering. The floor was dirty and small piles of rubble and debris had been shoved aside. Some doors were missing, others were closed. They removed their key necklaces again.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps behind her. Aleja and The Doctor turned around and face a tall Cardassian who was looking at them with sharp eyes. "Who are you? What are you doing in here?" he asked with a rough voice.

Aleja felt her throat go dry. This man – if she was allowed to call him 'man' – did not seem to be very humorous and just caught them sneaking into a government building.

"Oh, I'm sorry we didn't knock at the front door," The Doctor said with a smile and Aleja wondered if he always took things so easily. "We're working for UNIT, an organisation from Earth which is associated with the Federation of United Planets. We have been sent here to assess the situation measured by UNIT's standard. My codename is 'The Doctor' and this is my assistant, Aleja Moihd."

"Assess the situation, hm?" the Cardassian who did not seem to have shaven or slept in the last days answered, obviously not knowing whether to trust them or not.

"Here are my papers," The Doctor said and showed him a white card in a black leather case. "Got these quite recently. Psychic paper," he whispered to Aleja, "makes people see what I want them to see."

"Ah," the alien said and returned the papers. "I am Gul Macet, current chief of security in this city. I have been sent here to keep the peace – but you will have noticed how good that worked out. If you follow me, I will show you the rest of the staff," he said and showed the way.

"How come I understand him?" Aleja asked The Doctor in low voice. "I don't assume he speaks English?"

"No, he speaks Cardassian. But the TARDIS is telepathic and connects to your brain. It is not just a spaceship, but also a universal translator. It translates nearly every language in the universe. Except Gallifreyan, for example."

"Your native language, right?"

"Yes. Beautiful language. Very hard to learn though. It does not only have different modes and tenses, but these have to adapt to whether you are from the future talking to someone in the past, or vice versa. It always depends on what you have experienced – or will experience – and how much the person you talk to has experienced. And then there's a different mode for if you're uncertain. Like the subjonctif or subjuntivo in the Romanic languages. Do you speak one?"

"I've had French at school and I am fluent in Spanish. My mum thought it to be important because she said that my dad was Spanish."

They arrived in the central command hall in the first storey of the building. It wasn't a huge room, and computer consoles were all over the place, although some were shut off while others were throwing sparks.

"This is the current staff administered to the governmental office of Cardassia IV," Gul Macet explained.

There were five or six Cardassians and several people from others species that Aleja could not identify. Two looked like humans but had pointy ears and weird eyebrows and an awkward looking haircut. Another one was blue with white hair and had two antennae on his head while another man looked just like a human – except for these waved ridges on his nose.

"The population had been quite peaceful until yesterday evening. There had of course been some minor uproars but nothing as serious as you can see on the outside right now. Yesterday, at about twenty hundred hours local time, your Federation announced that a ship of Klingon and Federation ambassadors will land on every major planet of the system. You can understand that the people feel like a second occupation is standing before."

"Yes, I understand. And I can also assure you that this is not the case."

"Oh, don't worry. Your friends here have assured me that often enough," the Gul said and nodded towards the non-Cardassians. "We have already called for back-up and more security patrols will be arriving from Cardassia Prime in several hours. We can deal with the insurrection outside the building. They won't be able come inside. That is not the problem."

"Then what is?" Aleja asked. She tried to sound normal but she was far too nervous and excited. She was standing on a different planet, in an unknown building, surrounded by alien lifeforms! She really made it! Being in outer space, something she had always dreamt of as a kid. Her mother had told her that there were different worlds, and different people awaiting them, but she had never thought that she would one day be able to experience it first-hand. If her mother could know…she would be proud.

"Well, to be honest, we have two problems: The first is based upon the recently grown xenophobia among the people."

"Don't get me wrong, but Cardassians have always thought they were superior to other species," The Doctor intervened.

Gul Macet sighed. "During the war, many people, and unfortunately the children as well have learnt to hate the Dominion with all their species they brought on Cardassia: the Vorta, the Founders and their soldier race, the Jem'Hadar. Many people cannot differentiate between the aliens who are nice and those who wanted to kill us. Aliens are aliens. That's their motto. The same happened to Earth two centuries ago, and they have learnt from their mistakes.

"And now, with the Federation intervening…helping…the people want to rebuild the infrastructure and the government on their own. Without foreign help. But we would need time for that. We don't have this time. The Alpha Quadrant is just recovering from one of its greatest and most destructive wars in history and we already see the next threat approaching: The Borg are making their way from the Delta to the Alpha Quadrant and it looks like we won't have any way to stop them. We are devastated, Doctor. At wit's end. And our own civil uprisings aren't much of a help. The people have to realise that we need the help. And during the last few weeks, several Ardanans have turned up in the city. Completely confused and not knowing what has happened to them. Some of them were killed by angry citizens. Some we could rescue and hide in abandoned buildings. We have contacted the Federation about it, but to be honest, everyone is quite busy already."

A long and uncomfortable silence followed.

"And the second problem?" Aleja asked carefully.

"There's a ship delivering medical supplies approaching Lakertia. The people don't know that we're going to receive more supplies and right now there is no way to tell them. A few days ago we've had an accident in the ore mines in the west of the city. The people in the hospital camps are dependent on this aid. However, we cannot leave the building. If the Ardanan ship isn't welcomed, they will fly away again and we don't have the medicine we desperately need. We cannot leave here. Speaking of which…how did you come in? The guards hadn't notified me of your arrival."

"Well, we had decided to rather make an unobtrusive approach. I think we could also leave without being noticed. If you tell us where the Ardanans are going to land, we can welcome and tell them that we do need the supplies. I'm sure they'll understand your situation here," The Doctor offered.

"I would really appreciate it. But tell me, Doctor, do we have a security leak?"

"I can assure you that no one will get in the same way we did," The Doctor said.

"Good," Gul Macet said. He grabbed a device – that looked like a tablet, Aleja thought – and entered some information. He handed The Doctor the PADD. "I have programmed the location of the landing place of the Ardanan ship. It will probably be of Federation medical type. I have also given you directions for the medical camps that we built up in the north part of the city. Good luck."

The Doctor thanked and together with his companion they left through the main corridor. They pulled out their necklaces again and left the building completely. "Oh, it looks as if the landing place of the ship is only two miles away from the TARDIS," The Doctor noticed while studying the PADD. "We should better hurry if we want to arrive in time," he added and started walking through the nearly deserted city.

Meanwhile, Gul Macet was pacing impatiently in the office.

"They will not answer faster the more you walk," one of the Vulcans said and turned back to the computer console he was repairing before he could spot the Gul's angry glance. Only a few moments later, the main screen started to blink and then the face of another Cardassian appeared on it.

"Garak," Gul Macet recognised the fellow Cardassian in civilian clothes. Although he had barely known Elim Garak before his exile, he did not like him. Perhaps the reason for that was that Macet's cousin was the archenemy of Garak, and whatever happened, blood was always thicker than water. After the first few conversations Gul Macet had realised that Garak was not a bad man, just the circumstances had made the two Cardassians feel uncomfortable talking to each other.

"I take it you wonder when your back-up will arrive in Lakertia?" ambassador Garak asked with his trained diplomatic smile.

"And your question allows me to guess that it will take a while? Do you have any idea what is going on here?" Gul Macet answered, trying to contain his anger. Garak was the born diplomat. Never raging out of control, never aggressive, always smiling, and always 'nice' to everyone.

"We've had some problems sending you the troops in the first place. Cardassian civilians have been demonstrating at the military hangar and the situation here on Cardassia Prime is no different to yours. But I can assure you that we're doing our best to support every planet in this system. It's just that we are quite overstrained over here. Especially with the latest breakout of the plague…"

"I know, Garak. We've had cases here as well. And the sudden appearances of confused Ardanans is not helping."

"A Federation exploration vessel is already on their way. But they had to stop at Betazeth due to an emergency situation," Garak informed.

Gul Macet only sighed as a response and sent one demanding glance before ending the transmission.


	9. Serial 3 - Episode 2

Episode 2 – The Ardanan Ship

"It is hot here," Aleja mentioned. Actually, she was sweating like a pig and her body was screaming for a break. They had been walking for a time that felt like an eternity and she just wanted to rest…to sit down, or lie down, and only concentrate on breathing. The latter alone was already tough enough in an environment like this. She was sure that it had to be over 30 degrees centigrade and the air was unbearably humid. Although she had initially been glad to having left her warm jacket in the TARDIS, she now wished to have more protection against the burning sun.

"I'm sure I'll get sun burns," she added and sceptically regarded her skin.

"Don't worry. The UV rays do not enter the atmosphere. An artificial shell protects Cardassian and most alien skins as well. The marge of the city isn't far."

"The planet of yours…how far is it away from Earth?" she asked and tried to wipe away the sweat from her forehead.

"Just a ten minute ride in the TARDIS. Human ships from this century would need much longer," he explained.

"Could we travel there as well?" she asked curiously. "Do they all look…human?"

The Doctor laughed. "I might look like a human, but my inner blood system and organs are completely different to yours. And I'm afraid it would be difficult to visit my planet. The tensions between my race, the Timelords, and the Daleks from the planet of Skaro are growing. It has become difficult travelling within our solar system." He gasped for breath. He wasn't the youngest anymore and although he could endure more than an average human, this climate conditions were not perfect for him either.

"Tell me more about you, Aleja. You said you never knew your father. Has he left you and your mother when you were young? Were you born in Aberdeen?"

"Yes, I was born in Aberdeen, but before it had become so cold. Some people blame the industry, but I believe it's a natural weather change. Well, yes, my mum said that my dad had looked Spanish, but she wasn't sure. His name, his whole identity had been a fake. I guess I will never know who he really was…"

"What exactly happened?" The Doctor asked. He still did not trust her completely. Perhaps her background story might offer him some clue.

"Well…," it seemed to be a difficult topic for Aleja, which made The Doctor even more curious. "My mum had been working for UNIT and later as a military communication officer in the government of what would become the Independent State."

"Independent State?"

"Of Scotland."

"Oh, right."

"However, she met this guy. I think he was called José Enríquez Velázquez. My mum barely talked about him. They had been together for more or less a month when my mum found out that he wasn't who he pretended to be. She had been working late in the office and noticed that someone was trying to break in. She encountered José in the archive rooms and he explained to her that the only reason he had been with her was that he had needed the access codes to the archive. He beat up my mum very badly and copied highly classified documents. Unfortunately, no one ever found out which." She gasped for breath in this hot climate, before she continued: "One month later, my mother found out that she was pregnant. She wanted to abort but due to her medical condition – she still hadn't quite recovered and some ribs had been broken – she had to carry out the child – me. We never heard of José, or whatever his name might be, again. When I was ten, my mother married Rahul Moihd, who is a worker at the steel plant in Aberdeen. Well, that's my story, Doctor. What is yours?"

"Do you see these people over there?" The Doctor suddenly said and pointed into a street to their left. Aleja had a look. There were indeed many Cardassians, and it looked as if a camp had been established. They walked closer and realised that she was right – a hospital camp. Simple beds had been arranged and wounded Cardassians were lying and screaming.

"It must be first aid for the injured workers of the mine. Gul Macet has mentioned an accident, remember?" The Doctor whispered.

"But that was days ago. Why haven't these people been moved to a hospital or treated adequately?"

"They lack hospital places and medical supplies. That's why we're supposed to meet the Ardanans. They don't have enough Doctors here…" He walked past the people and regarded the Cardassians. Their uniforms and faces were dirty, blood adhered to their skin and open wounds let one look at naked bones. The Doctor reacted quickly: "Listen, Aleja, I need to help these people. I am a Doctor and I need to help. You have to meet the Ardanans alone."

"What? Are you kidding?" Aleja asked and felt her skin become even hotter. He would leave her here on her own?

"They need my help."

"Are you even a medical Doctor?"

"I know first aid. Look at these people. Those are dozens. And do you see the doctors? I count less than five. You can do it, Aleja," he encouraged her. He put his hands on her arms. "Meet the Ardanans. Tell them there is a situation in town and the people from the provisional government cannot welcome them but that we need those medical supplies badly. Lead them back to the city, and bring those Ardanans directly here. You can do this, Aleja. Remember the situation in the Keel Miller facility. You mastered it perfectly."

She nodded. She could not speak anymore as her mouth had suddenly went dry. He gave her the PADD with the directions and let her continue the walk towards the marge of the city. She moved forwards but felt like being in trance. How could he leave her on her own? He barely knew her. She barely knew him! And here she was, on her own, on a different planet, in a different sector of the galaxy!

She saw that she was approaching the big stone wall again. The guards noticed her as she did not possess an incredibly long neck or grey skin.

"I need to pass," she explained and without a word by the guards, they opened the gate – which was a wooden door with so many holes that she could have walked through without hindrance anyway. Judging by the glances she received, Aleja felt confirmed that xenophobia had arisen among the people. She was being stared at like a murderer.

While The Doctor bent down in front of a crying Cardassian woman, he looked at how Aleja stumbled away. He knew that she wasn't up to such a task, but on planets like this, in times like this, you had to grow with what you have to do. She would manage, he was sure, and it was another test to find out what made her so strange. She had seemed cold and calculating in a situation of distress before, and perhaps she would activate this inner tranquillity again.

"What exactly happened?" he asked a nurse because the woman in front of him did not seem able to speak. "I thought it had been a mining accident?"

The nurse who was just treating a man in a cut open soldier uniform turned around. "It had been. But the explosion hurt the many people nearby who had been cooking lunch for the miners. Have you just arrived? Is Federation help on the way? I don't care what the protestors on the market place are saying, we need your Federation!"

"Medical supplies are on their way, but not more doctors or nurses. Help is needed throughout the system," he said and studied the arm of his patient. How long was it ago that he had actually helped an injured? Has he ever treated someone like this, physically? What right did he have to call himself a Doctor then?

The arm looked badly infected and the brown blood had taken on a black colour where it had dried. The accident had been two days ago and this man had still not been operated properly.

"Can you hear me?" the Doctor asked and touched the Cardassian's forehead. It was at least 50 degrees centigrade, far more than the average 45 degrees centigrade of Cardassian skin.

The man nodded. "I have a pain in my arm…" he muttered with much effort.

"I know," The Doctor said and slightly touched it. The Cardassian's face signalled that it hurt. The Doctor jumped up and ran over to the nurse. "This man will die within the next hour unless his arm is amputated," he hissed.

The nurse did not seem impressed. "We don't have enough places in the hospital. And no doctors or theatres to perform such complicated operations."

"If he were a high ranking officer of the military, would you have time and doctors then?"

The nurse didn't answer but walked past him to treat a new patient. The Doctor sighed. He had hardly lost his temper before, especially not in this body. He didn't even know what his face would look like when he was angry. How could he pretend that everything was fine? Once the Master had been dealt with, once all Daleks were occupied with threatening the Timelords, once the Cyberman had disappeared… There was so much left to be done in this universe, how could he travel and see it as a silent watcher, without interfering and helping those who needed help?

The Ardanan ship had already landed a few hundred meters away from the gigantic city wall. Probably silently enough for the guards inside the city not to notice. Aleja did not know how to communicate with the people inside the ship so she decided to walk straight towards them. When she was about twenty metres away, the loading platform of the cargo bay went down, and two persons stepped out of the ship. Aleja was surprised that they both looked human and did not have any notable features. But perhaps they had a completely different anatomy, as The Doctor had explained to her, or she looked Ardanan herself.

"My name is Marton. I am the Captain of this ship. We deliver medical supplies from the planets Earth and Tellarite," the older man said. He looked surprise to see a non-Cardassian woman, especially one wearing neither a Cardassian nor Federation uniform.

"I am Aleja Moihd. We are very grateful for your help but there is currently a difficult situation here in the city. The politicians are locked in their governmental office and there are civil uprisings which do not allow them to leave. I have been sent here to welcome you. The medical supplies are urgently needed due to a mining accident a few days ago," she stuttered. She was far too nervous.

"Then we better start distributing," the younger man said. None of them were wearing recognisable uniforms. "The problem is that the beaming shields around the city a risen. We cannot beam the cargo inside. Do you know how to lower the shields?"

"Er, unfortunately not," she replied, guessing it would be close to impossible to get back to Gul Macet in time and talk to him about that matter.

"Then we'll beam the cargo outside the ship and you'll have to find someone to carry the boxes inside. We will be awaited on Bajor in 23 hours and I don't want to be late," the Captain said and turned around. "Now follow me," he instructed and they boarded the ship.

Aleja walked after him and was astonished by how small the corridors were. Somehow she had always expected star ships to have more space – or perhaps she had just been so overwhelmed by how the TARDIS was bigger on the inside. The interior of the ship resembled a labyrinth. She was already lost when they arrived on something that – based on her knowledge of science fiction series – she would call the bridge.

The Captain quickly spoke with a Lieutenant who was standing at a computer console at the wall. This one then turned to Aleja and explained, "I'll just beam every box-shaped thing in the cargo bay outside, alright? That way I avoid beaming over people. By the way, Captain, shouldn't Mao be watching the freight? I read no life signs in cargo bay."

"Yeah, he should be," the Captain mumbled annoyed while the beaming process was in progress. "But we all know Mao… Computer, locate Ensign Tazeh Mao."

Aleja cringed slightly when a computer voice sounded from all around them and stated, "Ensign Tazeh Mao is not aboard the ship."

"When did he leave?" the Captain wanted to know.

"Ensign Tazeh Mao left the ship five minutes ago."

"I scanned the surroundings," the Ensign said. "I read no Ardanan life signs outside the ship.

"This is strange," the Captain said and had a look at the screen himself. "Did you beam all cargo out?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then what is that?" he asked and pointed at a man-shaped shadow on the screen showing the surveillance video from the cargo bay.

"Looks like a person," Aleja noted and had a closer look.

"Computer, how many people are aboard the ship?" the Captain said.

"There are 17 people aboard this ship. 16 Ardanans and one unidentified species."

The Ardanan Captain eyeballed Aleja. "The computer is supposed to recognise species from most known planets."

"Well, it might be because I'm from far away…and…it's really complicated," Aleja answered, avoiding to say that she was from a completely different time.

"We're a crew of 18," the Ensign reminded them. "Two must have left the ship."

"I have ordered no one to leave!" the Captain said indignant. "We need to be back in space in a few minutes if we don't want to be late."

"That still doesn't explain what this shadowy thing there is. It looks like some sort of statue," Aleja said and pointed at the monitor. "Has it moved?" she added in exactly the same moments in that the lights started to flicker and went out.


	10. Serial 3 - Episode 3

Episode 3 – The Angels of Stone

The Doctor nearly fell over Cardassians lying on the ground when he was carrying the heavy water bucket to the marge of the camp. The mining area had been a few hundred meters outside the city. The city had grown during the centuries to come closer to the ore sources, and the camp next to the mines where lunch for the workers was being prepared by Cardassian mothers, had also been a preferred playground for young children, whose parents did not want to leave them unattended at their homes. Hence, when the accident and the explosion had occurred, many children had been injured by the subsequent shift of the Earth and the soil which had suddenly been sucked into the mining corridors. Of course, treating the children had been a priority, but most of their parents were dead or unconscious or they had lost contact, and there were worse injuries to be treated now.

When being told about the children's fate, The Doctor could not help but come over to the handful youngsters who were not older than twelve or thirteen years. These children had grown up during the war, they knew what it meant to suffer and to hide, and they all seemed to have seen a lot in the past months. The Doctor put the water bucket in the middle of the children who had gathered in the shadow of a building. The sun had risen higher and was burning mercilessly down on the desert soil.

As soon as the bucket touched the ground, the children rushed towards it. "Remember what I told you," The Doctor urged, "one after another." The children, driven by thirst, but still reminded on one of the basic principles, sat down again and one after another drank and splashed some water in their faces. All their bleeding had been stopped, their wounds were starting to heal. Not all children had been this lucky. There were still too many of them in the nearby hospital, and the youngest playing friend of theirs had not been found in the rubble at the accident site yet.

The Doctor turned around when two Cardassian soldiers who had also decided to help the wounded, walked over.

"You're the one calling himself 'The Doctor', aren't you?" the taller one of them said.

The Doctor nodded.

"You are living up to your name. But you have also mentioned medical supply by the Federation, right?"

"Yes. There has a ship landed outside the city. Actually, they should be here already," The Doctor explained. "A friend of mine went to welcome them because…because of the situation at the governmental buildings…"

"We understand," the other Cardassian said. "Shall we go and take a look at what has happened? Maybe they have problems because of the shield that is protecting the city. It's an instalment the Dominion had made and as much as we hated them, it seemed too useful to dismantle it."

"Yes, that would be great. The ship is supposed to have landed just outside the city. The shield just protects from phasers?"

"From slight phaser fire and beaming. They won't be able to beam the cargo inside the city."

"All right, it's better to get going then, isn't it?" The Doctor said.

"Yes…yes, it definitely moved," the Ardanan Ensign replied frightened when the light came back on again.

The Captain pressed the communications button. "Cargo ship Holzflamme calling for anyone who can hear me." He repeated it twice until the comm system suddenly started giving out a thrilling noise. He turned it lower.

"Something is jamming our signal, sir," the Ensign stated. "…and draining our power systems."

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. "The automatic door system must be damaged," the young Ensign muttered. In response, the captain grabbed something under his Captain's chair and charged a weapon. The door opened with a loud noise, but it were two Ardanans to enter the bridge.

"There's something on this ship," one of them stated. They looked scared, but did not seem to have any physical injuries. "We heard Maso scream, but when we came to see what happened on cargo bay, we could not find him. And nothing else…"

"Any sort of statue, perhaps?" Aleja proposed.

"Yes, a stone statue, but I thought it was our freight," the other officer, who was quite tall, answered.

"We saw it on the surveillance video before we lost the signal," Aleja explained. Why would The Doctor put her in a situation like that? Did he know about these 'things', or did he just not care whether she encountered the dangers of the universe?

"Whatever," the Captain decided and looked at his weapon. "We need to get into cargo bay or wherever this 'statue' is hiding and neutralise it. I don't want any more of my crewmembers go missing."

"Wait…," Aleja said. "Are all of your crewmembers Ardanans?"

"Yes," the tall officer replied.

"I've been talking to the Gul in charge here of this city and he said that during the past few months, several Ardanans had turned up in the city, feeling lost, and not knowing what had happened to them. Can there be a relation?"

"I don't know," the Captain said. "And I don't care. The only important thing is to get this 'statue' out of my ship, find out where my crewmen are hiding and then continue to Bajor. I don't like delays." Deciding to have said enough, he walked out of the door. "Grab a gun and follow me, that's an order," he added.

The officers shrugged their shoulders and did as they were told. The Ensign handed Aleja a phaser gun. "It's a standard Federation phaser. Have you worked with those before?"

She shook her head.

"It has ten settings. This one is the lightest stun, and number 10 is 'pulverise'. Never use it. I'll put it on level 3 for you. It would stun an enemy for roughly an hour."

"I…," she muttered. She didn't want to use a gun. Even if there was an alien, shouldn't they try to talk to it at first? But the Captain didn't seem to be much of the negotiator-type. She simply nodded and hoped that she would not get into a situation where she would need this weapon.

The three officers and Aleja went out of the door as well and noticed that the Captain was trying to open the following door of the corridor manually. The light flickered again before the main lightening went out and the emergency lamps were switched on, turning the corridor into a dark-red colour. Aleja suddenly felt like at the Keel Miller Research Facility. There was this bad feeling in her stomach, making her feel as if she had to vomit, a pulsatile headache made thinking painful, and her heart seem to beat as if in competition for its life.

They opened doors and followed down corridors. Aleja felt lost again.

"We should get to the transporter and beam all life signs out of the ship," an officer proposed.

"I agree," the Ensign said quickly.

"Alright, alright," the Captain said. Then we'll have to go left at the next corner. Said and done, Aleja nearly shrieked loudly when she turned. There it was, the shadow they had seen on the video screen, and it indeed was a statue. It was an angel statue, tall and with huge wings, covering its face with its hands.

"It's just a damn statue," the Captain noticed and laughed. He walked towards it.

"Don't touch it," one of his men warned.

"How did it get up here?" another one wanted to know. They all turned and had looks around.

When the Aleja turned back to the statue, she did scream. The Captain was gone and the statue was not covering its face anymore but one hand was reaching out for them. "What the hell has happened?" she asked and moved backwards.

They heard someone shouting and when Aleja turned she saw another crewman standing at the end of a corridor that was crossing theirs. When she turned back again, the angel had moved closer again.

"Was everyone turning?" the Ensign asked.

The crewman who shouted walked over to them, "what is this?"

"Where's Saklo?" the tall officer asked. And he was right, his friend was gone.

"I think it moves when we're not looking," Aleja said and dared to take a few steps forward. She quickly touched the angel's hand. "It is stone," she determined.

"But if we're not allowed to turn away, are we not allowed to blink either?" the Ensign asked and Aleja walked backwards again.

"I don't know how fast it can be," Aleja muttered. Aliens that turned into stone once they were being looked at? And when they weren't, they killed people just by touching them? It seemed like a mad horror story that was broadcasted late at night, and not like something that actually happened in real life.

"We're three people. I doubt that we'll blink at the same time," the crewman said.

"We should still get to the transporter room," the Ensign added.

"Okay, and we should not blink." Although easier said than done, Aleja was the first to move forwards. "I think we don't die if it touches us," she explained. She wasn't sure, but she felt calmer with the slightest chance of hope. "I mentioned that people appeared within the last months throughout this city. Can't it be that the touch of this angel just teleports you to another place, in another time?"

"But why can it only happen if you don't look at it?" the Ensign asked.

"I don't know. I just needed a reasonable sounding explanation." Aleja had passed the angel, but didn't not look away from it. The two crewmen also passed. Very slowly, touching the walls of the corridor, they walked backwards.

"What way?" Aleja whispered. She knew the Angel could probably neither hear nor understand her, but she couldn't speak any louder. Her throat was dry and she had problems swallowing. She was thinking too much. During the crisis in the Research Facility she did not think at all, she just did. But this situation was entirely different. Here, moving fast could become your doom.

"To the left…right," the Ensign said. They turned around the corner and sighed all together when the angel did not follow them.

"How does the Angel know when we don't look?" the crewman wondered aloud.

"I don't know, but I am not very keen on finding out right now," the Ensign admitted and they passed the automatic door to the transporter room. He then locked the door manually so that the Angel could not come in.

"I'm reading five life signs on board," the crewman said. "Plus us. I'm beaming those five out but you'll have to stand on the transporter platform," he said to Aleja, "because you don't wear a badge." He pointed to the small metal badge on his shirt.

They heard someone knocking on the door.

"The Angel?" Aleja asked.

"Probably," the crewman said.

Aleja and the Ensign walked onto the platform and the crewman initialised a delayed transporter beam which gave him enough time to get onto the platform as well. Aleja and the Ensign looked at each other to nod whether they were prepared, and when Aleja looked back to the door, the Angel was standing two meters in front of her.

"How long is the beaming delay?" the Ensign asked.

"We should have been beamed off," the crewman rushed from the platform to the computer consoles. "Automatic beaming has been turned off. I'll beam you down manually."

"But what about you?" Aleja screamed when she noticed the certain look on the crewman's face when he initialised the beaming signal. The next thing Aleja saw was the endless desert she had walked through in order to reach the ship. They were outside, but the crewman was missing. Aleja turned around. Five other people had been beamed down, chatting about what might have happened to the ship and crew. The Ensign walked over to them and Aleja followed, to listen to his explanation as well.

"Oh my God," one of the Ardanans suddenly said and they all turned around. Four Angel statues had left the ship, making their way towards the peripheral wall of Lakertia City.

"We cannot allow them to reach the city," Aleja exclaimed and walked towards the immobile statues. The other Ardanans followed her and also stared at the aliens. Aleja herself felt ridiculous, just staring at something to prevent destruction and invasion. But then she spotted something behind the Angels, something that was walking towards them. It was the Doctor! It had to be. He was the only one wearing a long brown coat in a heat like this. And he was accompanied by two Cardassian men in military uniform. Aleja had never been so happy to see uniformed people.

"What happened?" the Doctor asked when he arrived and his companion briefed him quickly about what she had experienced in the past hours.

"I've heard about these creatures," The Doctor explained. "But on my planet they are a myth. They're called Weeping Angels and they are quantum-locked. It means that they can only move if no one is looking at them. If you do, they are as solid as stone. The story goes that they feed on the energy of the life that you would have lived. They do so by sending you into the past, to a different spot in time and space."

"This would be the reason why Ardanans have appeared on this planet throughout the past few months," Aleja said.

"Exactly. These Angels must be weak, or they would have sent the crewmen further into the past and perhaps even onto different planets."

There was a silence following in which all Cardassians, Ardanans and The Doctor and Aleja together were staring at the Angels which did not move further towards the city.

"What now, Doctor?" One of the Cardassians voiced.

The Doctor sighed. He needed to think. He needed time.

"And how long exactly are we now supposed to stand here and watch these Weeping Angels?" Aleja asked The Doctor.


	11. Serial 3 - Episode 4

Episode 4 – Xenophobia

Aleja's eyes were watering and although she was only wearing a t-shirt, she was sweating like crazy. The sweat literally dropped ran down her forehead and she dared not to blink too often. They were many people, so it was improbable that they blinked at the same time, but she didn't want anything to happen by coincidence.

"Doctor," she muttered again. She desperately hoped for him to answer. She felt as helpless as never before.

Suddenly, the alien man turned around. Aleja dared to glance over and saw something shiny in his open hand palm. "The perception filter," he explained and she took it. "Go to the city," he instructed. "Tell Gul Macet what is happening. They can either use the city's defence systems or they could order a ship in orbit to destroy the Weeping Angels."

Aleja nodded. "One more thing," she said, her voice trembling, as was her body. Another mission on her own? Going back into the cities where demonstrations against aliens took place? She neither had the right hair nor the right skin colour to be a Cardassian and she looked completely different. "What exactly are Weeping Angels? Aliens from another planet? How come they have developed like this?"

"That's the biologist in you, isn't it?" The Doctor answered. "I'm not sure. Weeping Angels are really ancient. But some fairy tales in my culture say that hundreds of years ago, criminals of my people who had committed unspeakable crimes were to be punished by turning them into quantum-locked creatures. I have a certain amount of energy stored in my body, which makes it able for me to have thirteen lives. I told you about regenerations, remember? These criminals had been removed their energy, so they started feeding of other people's energy. That's why they steal people's life energy. Once my people had realised that these Weeping Angels were powerful beings still after what was supposed to be highest punishment, this sort of punishment was not used anymore and forgotten…now go. We cannot stay here forever," he urged her.

Without another question, although she had thousands in her mind, Aleja walked towards the angels. Very carefully she passed them, constantly looking at them. She had just turned around to walk towards the city gate, when a loud explosion made her shriek und cower down to the ground. She dared to turn around. The Ardanan spaceship had blown up. High flames were reaching into the sky and smaller explosions followed.

Aleja turned back to the Angels. One of them was right above her. The Cardassians, Ardanans and The Doctor had also looked at the spaceship and lost sight of the Angels who had hence been able to move. Aleja crawled backwards, away from the Angels, not looking around. They had all moved, all come closer to the city – and to her. She had really had luck! "I'm sorry," The Doctor shouted. "Go on! It was probably the Angels themselves who had triggered the explosion of the ship."

Aleja nodded, still in shock and got up. She stumbled backwards, but then turned around and walked forwards. She couldn't run. It was too hot, she was sweating too much and her mouth was still dry. The temperatures must have risen by now to over 45 degrees and the suns were burning down mercilessly onto the desert ground. It took her an eternity to reach the border wall of the city. She knew that the others were still watching her from the distance, and she wanted to progress as fast as possible, but she was tired, dirty and completely out of breath. She wanted to shout to the guards, ask them for help or water, but then she realised that she was wearing the perception filter. When she came closer, she saw that there were no guards left at all. Probably the Cardassians the Doctor brought with him, she thought and finally stepped on paved soil.

She could now walk faster, but it took her less than ten minutes to encounter the next problem: The demonstrating crowd in front of the governmental buildings had gone – into the building. People were shouting louder than before, pushing themselves into the building complex. She saw uniformed Cardassians running away. Phaser rays were to be seen and heard, and Aleja backed off and hid behind a corner. Children and women were running away from the market place while angry men stormed the building ruins. It took them only a while until most people on the square had gone and the phasers were now to be heard from inside the building. Aleja could hardly walk into the building right now and talk to Gul Macet. Either he was killed by now or taken hostage. These Cardassian extremist seemed very serious about not wanting alien help on their planet. Aleja stopped a woman who was running past her.

"What has happened?" she wanted to know.

The woman did not answer.

Aleja knew it was stupid but she removed her perception filter nevertheless.

She woman shrieked and Aleja repeated her question.

"The xenophobic extremist have stormed the building. They want to take hostages and force the government on Cardassia Prime to make all aliens on this planet here leave! You should go and hide, child. Are you one of the Federation ambassadors or Doctors? Leave the planet as soon as possible. Contact your friends!" Aleja loosened her grip and the Cardassian woman ran away.

Aleja put back the perception filter necklace around her neck before she drew too much attention. There was no way to get into the building now. Even if no one noticed her, she would bump into a Cardassian sooner or later and that would definitely make them notice her. She leaned against a wall and helplessly looked around. Why would The Doctor do this to her? On the other hand, she was a grown-up woman and she was responsible not only for herself right now, but also for everyone who was endangered by the Angel's threat. She looked at her feet, her shoes were dirty and so was her jeans. Then, her glance wandered away and hovered over the ground. The sewers!, she thought. She sighed. Did she really have to go so far? She had no idea what Cardassian sewers were like but she did not like the idea of crawling through people's disposals on any planet.

She walked to one of the side streets of the market place and inspected a gully. Funny how they had gullies on this planet, too. She opened it and looked down. It was completely dark and she could not see a thing. She grabbed a stone that was lying at the side of the street and dropped it. After a short time she heard a 'plop'. "I must be mad," she muttered to herself. Slowly, she lowered herself down the round opening in the street. She touched the wall and luckily found something that felt like a ladder. She grabbed it and climbed it until her feet reached solid ground. She pulled out her mobile phone and activated the torch mode. She had ended up on a small pavement-like pedestal that ran alongside the walls. It was around thirty centimetres small and next to it was a little river of a dark, strongly smelling liquid about which Aleja preferred not to think about too much. Assuming that she wanted to head into the direction of the governmental buildings, she started walking on the small pavement. Five steps in and she already knew that this idea was definitely one of the most foolish ones of all her life.

She felt helpless and lost when she finally saw another gully above her. She figured that she must be either close or under the building so she put her mobile phone into her mouth and climbed up the slippery ladder at the wall. She shoved aside the gully and had a look outside. She had expected sunlight but instead was greeted by a pitch-black. She climbed onto the ground and took her mobile to have a look around. She definitely was in some sort of basement. There were boxes piled up and it looked like a humid and stinky storage room. After a few minutes of searching, she found a door that was unlocked and she proceeded into a corridor that was similar to the one where she had first walked in.

Her last visit to this building felt like ages ago, but it could not have been more than 8 hours. She sniffed her axle and just hoped that Cardassians would not have good noses. She took the next stairs she could find upwards and was glad to see sunlight shining through small windows. She had already feared that the sun would have gone down by now, one never knew on alien planets, and even near to the equator on Earth the sun could vanish from a few minutes to another. She heard voices behind her and pressed herself against the wall. She had no idea what would happen when wearing a perception filter but getting in physical contact with another person. Two Cardassians in civil clothing, probably belonging to the protestors, walked past. They did not see her and she was really relieved when she was alone in the staircase again. Although she knew it was stupid, she decided to follow the two of them. They walked into the huge command centre where The Doctor and Aleja had spoken to Macet. The door was demolished and she looked inside without being noticed. The ambassadors and Cardassians officials were sitting in the middle, looking tired and bored while people in civilian clothes were walking around, waving guns and shouting commands at each other.

"Everyone shut up," one of them screamed, probably the leader of the revolt. "We've established a link to Cardassia Prime."

It became more or less silent in the room. Aleja dared to walk into the room while everyone was looking on a huge screen where the face of another Cardassian appeared on.

"I am Korak Marel from Cardassia IV," the leader of the insurrection explained.

"I am Garak, the Federation ambassador on Cardassia Prime. I take it you are in command of the governmental facilities on Lakertia?" he asked and his gaze wandered through the room, remaining for too long on Aleja. Could he see her?, she wondered. It was impossible. No one else noticed her and she was wearing The Doctor's perception filter.

Aleja had a look at the computer consoles. At first, there were different symbols she could not decipher, but after a few seconds they began to make sense. Was it the TARDIS translators that needed a while to kick in? She read the instructions and tapped a few buttons when no one looked. With one ear she was listening to the conversation between Marel and Ambassador Garak. Marel wanted all foreigners on Cardassia IV to leave within 2 hours, and all Federation and other aid ships to leave the sector. He wanted the Cardassian Union to help themselves, they did not need to lose their pride by becoming dependent on others, and so on. Suddenly, the light in the room went from flickering to redly flickering.

"What is this?" Marel shouted and turned around. His men looked at each other with blank faces. One went over to where Aleja stood and she could step back just in time.

"Someone has raised the shields around the city," the Cardassian said. "And…there's something else. I read high energy signs outside the city."

"I see you have bigger problems there," Garak said but Marel cut him off in midsentence and ended the video call.

"Put it on screen," Marel ordered and a satellite picture of the burning spaceship appeared.

Another Cardassian walked over to the computer console but this time Aleja could not jump aside in time. They bumped into each other, resulting in both stumbling back in time. Suddenly, the Cardassian who had walked into her could see her while the others still couldn't. Reacting fast, Aleja removed the part of the TARDIS key, so that no one would find it.

"Where do you come from?" Marel asked surprised and pointed his gun at her. "How come we haven't see you before?"

Aleja didn't answer.

"Is it some kind of human cloaking technology that the Federation has now gotten hold off?" Marel shouted and looked at the Federation ambassadors. "I didn't know the Jem'Hadar had shared their secrets. Was is part of the peace treaty? After you have already acquired cloaking technology from the Romulans. Wasn't that enough?"

Aleja had no idea what this Cardassian was talking about and decided to simply keep silence.

"Are you working for the Federation?" Marel shouted at her.

She shook her head. "I came here by accident…with a friend of mine."

Before Marel could argue, Gul Macet interrupted: "This is true, Marel. Aleja, this woman, came to this city this morning and they have nothing to do with the Federation. I sent them to the border of the city to meet a ship which is delivering medical aid."

"A Federation ship?"

"A civilian Ardanan ship. But their supplies are from the Federation. We are in desperate need of those, Marel. You yourself have seen the many injured in the hospital camps."

Marel turned back to Aleja. "Why have you returned here?"

"Have a closer look on the satellite picture. You will see that next to the spaceship, a handful Ardanans, Cardassians and my friend, The Doctor, are opposing a few aliens called The Weeping Angels." Aleja quickly explained what Weeping Angels did and that they were the reason for the appearances of the Ardanans all over the city.

Marel shook his head. "Rubbish," he said. "Total rubbish. What do you intend to achieve with telling me such lies, child?"

"But it makes sense," Gul Macet intervened.

"Shut up!" the leader said. "I do not tolerate being lied to…what was your name? Aleja? This whole story – rubbish." He signalled her to sit down. Then he walked around, while explaining: "I think people of your kind – humans – need to be told a lesson. They need to learn that we Cardassians are not the weak race that was nearly going extinct in the war – we were the pride race to subdue the Bajorans, to become part of the Dominion. I need to teach you a lesson, human…"


	12. Serial 3 - Episode 5

Episode 5 – Negotiations

"I need to teach you a lesson, human," Marel repeated. He grabbed the phaser gun from a Cardassian civilian standing next to him and without hesitation he shot a Vulcan ambassador who sat less than two meters away from Aleja. She shrieked when she saw his back and head falling dumb on the floor. His eyes were still open and green blood trickled out of the burnt wound on his chest.

"Will you lie to me again?" Marel asked her.

She swallowed. "I haven't lied to you before," she muttered in a low voice and lowered her head.

He seemed to be satisfied enough and turned back to his followers to talk about a strategy what to do next.

Aleja robbed over to Gul Macet. "Can you tell me more about the situation? What exactly had this Dominion War been all about?"

"Where've you been for the last four years?" he asked surprised.

"Just…pretend I haven't had much contact to the outside world or something."

"Have you heard about the Marquis?"

"No…?"

Macet sighed but then started the history lesson.

One Angel had managed to move. It had only come five metres, but still. Only thirty metres separated the first Weeping Angel from the wall around the city. The shields had flickered when they had risen but less than five minutes later, they had been lowered again. The Cardassians and Ardanans had speculated about what might have happened, if Aleja had failed and been captured; but the Doctor remained silent. He had lost enough companions, and he could not help but see Peri's face. She had been annoying, he admitted, but he still felt responsible for her death.

Suddenly, they heard the noise of machines. Sand was swirled, and a small shuttlecraft de-cloaked a few meters to their left. The runabout door opened and three officers in Starfleet uniforms walked towards them. The one with a red uniform, a Bolian who had blue skin and a bald head, greeted them and let the Doctor explain the situation. The Bolian nodded about everything and then answered, "we're from the back-up team which is waiting in orbit. I'm sorry for intruding like that – it's our only runabout with a cloaking device which is also jamming all scanning signals and we did not want to alarm the hostage-takers." He then turned to the two humans in yellow uniforms. "Report."

"They appear to be…made of stone," the older human admitted after scanning the statues with his Tricorder, a portable scanning device. "But they emit strange energy signals. I cannot quite interpret them but these statues are definitely…some sort of alive."

The Bolian nodded. "Doctor, you seem to have the most experience with these creatures…"

"I have never met them before. I have only heard stories."

"Would an explosive device do any good?"

"Right now, they appear to be stone. Which means they also have the properties of stone. I think it would. If we watched until they have been destroyed. Otherwise they might run away in the last millisecond."

The officer nodded and let his two colleagues attach neat little bombs to the Angel statues.

"Be careful," the Ardanans warned while the humans came closer to the Angels.

Then, they all walked away a certain distance, of course, walking backwards. "Explosion in 10…" the younger human counted. They all continued staring. When the explosion was to be heard, they all kept their eyes fixed on the Weeping Angels, only blinking after the detonation had set off. When the dust found his way back to the ground again, they saw nothing but pieces of stone and marble lying around.

"It seemed to have worked," the Bolian said enthusiastically. No Angel was to be seen in their surroundings. He returned to the ship to report the success. When he returned, he also informed that none of the rubble pieces was bigger than ten cubic centimetres.

"Now we should get back to the situation in the government complex," one of the human Starfleet officer told his commanding officer.

"Situation?" The Doctor asked.

"A hostage situation," The Bolian explained. "The protestors have managed to storm the building and keep the officials in there hostage. As far as we are concerned, he is showing off with having killed a Vulcan ambassador."

"I sent my friend in there to warn them about the Weeping Angels!" The Doctor explained.

"Don't worry, Doctor. A taskforce will storm the building within the next twenty minutes. The Federation is not too happy about the situation either, but the Cardassians don't accept much help. Your friend will be fine," the human said and then turned to the Ardanans. "We've informed your government. Once the situation is over, you will be beamed aboard a Federation star ship and brought home where you will be compensated for your loss by the Cardassian Union. Who is your Captain?"

"He's dead," one of the men answered.

Aleja did not know how long she was sitting on the cold stone floor, but it seemed like hours. However, she was pretty sure that it could not have been more than two. She continued staring at the moving feet of the protestors who had obviously no clue what they were doing. Their leader Marel was shouting at his men, slapping them, but not actually coming to a decision.

Aleja's rear hurt and she tried to not let her legs fall asleep. She needed activity, she thought. Exactly in this moment, she heard something that she would relate to be gunfire and immediately wished that she hadn't hoped for activity.

"What is going on?" Marel shouted and Aleja was surprised that he still had a voice to shout with after all this yelling that had been going on in the past hours.

The live video of the surveillance cameras appeared on the big screen. Armed forces were seen shooting at Cardassian protestors who were patrolling the corridor.

"Arm yourselves!" one Cardassian protestor yelled. "Everyone grab a hostage!"

Suddenly, there was movement in the room. The government members jumped up, some of them were trying to use the moments of chaos to flee but were soon captured by the hands of the Cardassian protestors. Aleja felt how someone put her hands around her breasts and pulled her backwards. She tried to get free but then she felt a cold metal at her neck and she stopped moving. Immobilised, she hoped that this guy behind her wouldn't decide to shoot her on the spot.

"Behave, and I won't have to hurt you," she heard a rough voice in her head. She nodded. Following the example of the other Cardassian protestors, she was ungently pushed forwards while the gun remained pointed at her neck. Aleja was scared beyond her belief. What if this Cardassian stumbled and shot accidentally? What if his finger was twitching? What if…what if… She tried to breath regularly, but she had to gasp for more air now and then. They were leaving the central command post of the building and started to distribute in the building. Marel and his Bajoran hostage were walking straight towards the phaser gun fire, while Aleja's hostage keeper pushed her into a corridor to their right. "We're leaving this building," he grumped. "I'm not in the mood of dying a heroic death for the Union."

He pushed Aleja harder and she tried not to fall over her own feet. The lights became worse the farer they got away from the main corridor. The lights were flickering here, and the gun fire dreaded away, but the screaming was still to be heard.

"The Federation is stupid," the Cardassian muttered while they were climbing down some stairs. "They don't set their rifles to kill, they just stun their counterparts. I remember the war, when they finally were forced to show their true selves, when they had to kill their enemies. Not even Rura Penthe and the New Zealand penalty colony together could harbour as many prisoners as they have shot to death during the war." He went on and on and Aleja listened less and less. She was rather trying to figure out where they were and despite the translation matrix of the TARDIS, she hardly understood a word of what her hostage keeper was talking about. Suddenly, something hit the Cardassian from the right and she was torn down with him onto the floor. She rolled backwards and tried to feel for the gun. When she turned, she saw someone standing over the Cardassian, throwing away the gun into safe distance, and when the Cardassian tried to get up, this someone touched his right shoulder and made the alien fall down like for sleep.

"Doctor!" Aleja exclaimed and jumped up.

"Aleja, are you alright?" she heard his voice saying. She barely saw anything in this darkness.

"How did you find me?" she asked cheerfully. "What did you do to him?" she then wanted to know looking at the Cardassian shadow on the ground.

"Oh, a Vulcan neck grip…learnt it from an old friend. A non-violent way to…shut someone up," The Doctor answered and they started walking towards the corridor they came from. "I heard that the Federation planned to attack the building. They didn't want any civilians with them, so I used the sewers to get in and look for you."

The closer they came to the main hall, the more Aleja wondered why the shouting and the gun fire had stopped. Had the Federation won? Were they all safe again? "What about the Angels?" she asked and shivers ran down her spine. She hadn't thought about them at all since the Federation had intruded.

"All destroyed. While they were being looked at, they also took on the properties of stone. Federation officers just blew them up," the Doctor answered enthusiastically. He then stopped walking. "You know what, I'm not a friend of interrogations and all this 'why are you here'-stuff. Let's find a back door and return to the TARDIS," he proposed.

Aleja nodded and followed him. He was strange, this man. But also incredibly persuasive and – interesting.

"So…Doctor…," she started and did not really know how to ask. "You said you have heard about the Weeping Angels before… what exactly is it that is being said?"

"Well," The Doctor took a pause to think. "It's actually just a story that my parents told me when I was young. It is said that during the Dark Time, under Rassilon's rule, Timelords accused and convicted of terrible crimes were sent to serve lives long imprisonment in the dungeons under the Death Zone. Those days, Timelords abducted other aliens from their rightful time zones and put them into the Death Zone where they fought each other until death."

"Like gladiator games on Earth?"

"Exactly."

"Those were truly dark times…"

"We've become better since then…I think. We're not the same race we once were. I would like to say that we became less violent, but the unfortunate truth is that we became more powerful. And the more powerful a person becomes, the more he strives for even greater power. Right now, the Timelords have again become aggressive and challenge…well, this story perhaps another time. Where was I? Ah, yes, the dungeons under the Death Zone. These are locked by time. Which means that once inside, time progresses at a different rate than in the rest of the universe – sometimes even backwards. This means you can die before you were born. Legend says that those hunger games in the dungeons were the same as above the earth in the Death Zone. However, one day, some of the inmates could flee. But in the dungeons, in order to survive, they harvested each other. Timelords are very powerful beings, we possess the power of regeneration, which I already have explained to you. These criminals have used their regeneration energy to convert themselves into different beings, now seeking more and more energy to continue their lives. If you can still call it a life. They had to compromise – they became quantum locked. They can only move when no one sees them, they can only harvest a person's life energy when they touch them. But once they have enough energy, they can teleport – through devices of digital replication."

"Through what?"

"TV screens, pictures… If you see an angel on a monitor while it is being filmed, it can actually appear next to you. This sort of teleportation was also experimented with. But I don't know how far the research has gone, because it involves genetic engineering which is forbidden on my planet."

"So now the Weeping Angels – who once were Timelords like you – are scattered throughout the universe, trying to survive by stealing other people's life energy."

"Exactly."

"Sounds more like fantasy than science fiction…" Aleja noted.

"There's science behind it, believe me. But it would be beyond your scope of understanding."

They had reached the TARDIS and entered. Aleja liked how spacey the control room was. It looked like a huge living room from the 90's – just with a huge computer console in the middle.

"Could someone else profit from the Weeping Angel's method of harvesting other beings?" Aleja suddenly wondered.

"What do you mean?" The Doctor was taking off from the planet and they entered the time vortex.

"Well, let's assume someone wanted to create energy."

"You can't create energy. You can only convert it. But I get what you mean."

"Instead of…nuclear power, or water power, like we have on Earth, can't you use the energy that Weeping Angels have gathered throughout their lives and use it for yourself?"

"I think so…why?"

"I was wondering how the Weeping Angels got on board the Ardanan's ship in the first place. I mean, I hardly believe they decided for themselves to go onto a star ship and leave for an unknown planet. What if someone has put them there?"

"I don't know," The Doctor admitted. "But I'm pretty sure Starfleet will deal with it."

He did not know how mistaken he was. Because he was the one to deal with it…

Gul Macet hated interrogations. He hated both conducting them and involuntarily participating in them. He had been questioned for over five hours thoroughly about the occurrences in the government complex of Lakertia. When he returned to his office in the upper floor of the building ruins, he was close to jumping out of the nearby window when he saw a person waiting in his room, who was obviously another official who wanted to investigate how a situation could get out of hands that easily in the once so strict Cardassian city. After second thoughts, he brought himself to open the door. The man waiting for him turned around and Macet was surprised to see that he was human – and not wearing a Starfleet uniform. Instead, he was dressed very unfashionable, even for a Terran. He wore a sort of trousers that he had not seen before, a blue shirt and a long, grey coat.

"How can I help you?" Macet tried to bear his anger. "I assume you're not from the Federation?"

"No, I come from a different department. I am member of an organisation called Torchwood, which has its HQs on Earth and Vulcan," this man said and stepped forward. They shook hands. "My name is Captain Jack Harkness," the human said, "and I heard that you have met an individual named 'The Doctor'. Would you mind sharing your story?"


	13. Serial 4 - Episode 1

Serial 4 – The traces that you leave…

Episode 1 – The Beginning of the End

"What do we have this time?" Inspector Lestrade asked when he entered the horse-drawn carriage.

"Murder," the young police officer informed him. It was the first time he had to deal with murder, and he was both excited and disgusted by such a terrible crime. He held the telegraph paper that he had gotten less than ten minutes ago by the Scene of Crime Officers, and his hands were trembling when he summarised the occurrence. "Mrs Brown was killed-"

"Mrs Brown? You mean the wife of Lord Hamish Brown who passed away last month?"

"Yes, yes, exactly," the officer stuttered. "Mrs Brown was killed, apparently strangled to death by an unknown perpetrator. Her famous fob watch and all her jewellery is gone, but she still wears her silver necklace. She was identified by a pedestrian who accidentally walked past the scene."

"Great. A failed robbery. Do you know what this means?" the Inspector said nerved.

The police officer shook his head. He was still astonished by the chance he was getting, promoted into the most known crime department of Scotland Yard.

"Paperwork. It means a huge amount of paperwork," the Inspector said and jumped out of the carriage as soon as it has halted a few meters away from the crime scene. Many passers-by had stopped to gape, while three police officers tried to keep the civilians away from the body that lay on the ground.

Inspector Lestrade approached one of the police officers at the scene. "Isn't this Mrs Brown's house?"

The cop agreed.

"She was murdered in front of her house. The door is still open. I see…"

"It's obvious!" one man among the gapers shouted.

Inspector Lestrade turned around. He spotted a slender man with grey, curly hair who was wearing a long dark-blue coat. "Excuse me?" he said.

"It's obvious! It was the postman!"

"Inspector," the scene officer interrupted. "This was the man who we found kneeing besides the body when we came along."

"I was looking for evidence," this unknown man said. He then took a paper note out. "I found this, but your colleagues won't listen to me."

Inspector Lestrade looked at the officer who shrugged his shoulders. The Inspector sighed. He was listening to far too many people who had nothing to do with his job. Everyone wanted to be a detective. He was frequently listening to a lizard and a potato, why not listening to this old chap who had definitely seen better days? He signalled him to speak.

"Mrs Brown is a widow, I overheard your men saying. She was married to a Lord, so I gather she was rather wealthy now that her husband has died. On this note, that I found, the address of an advocate is written, so I assume she was just on the way to the bank to receive the last will."

"This includes in no way the postman," the Inspector laughed. He had a quick look around. A murderer was always present at the crime scene, and the postman indeed was.

"Yes, it does. She was notified that she has an appointment with the advocate. That's why she scribbled his address very hastily on this piece of paper. When she received the telegraph that the postman had given to her, she had opened it in his presence. He knew that it was about her fortune, and it probably contained very private information about her bank account. For example, the security code or question or whatever you need to access the account."

"Her account was indeed being robbed, Inspector," the young, recently promoted officer mentioned.

"What?" the Inspector raised an eyebrow.

"The officer in the telegraph office nearby just sent us this note." He gave it to the Inspector.

Lestrade had another look at the postman. He was wearing his bag, usually containing letters, and it was full. It was tea time, and at this time of the day his bag was normally empty as he had delivered today's mail already.

The strange man continued. "The postman realised his chance and acted in the heat of the moment. He then wanted it to look like a robbery. He stole her purse, her jewellery, but he forgot her necklace."

"Well," Inspector Lestrade needed to think. It all made sense. But who was he to count on the tales of an old man who probably was not more worth than a tramp. He decided. He leant over the scene of crime officer, and said "arrest the postman."

This one nodded, but they had stared too obviously, as the postman suddenly turned around and vanished into the crowd of gazers.

"Arrest him!" Inspector Lestrade shouted and let the two officers run after him. He himself preferred to stay, as his own weight wouldn't allow him to run more than five meters.

It did not take long until the two officers returned with the postman in between them.

"Good work," Lestrade said and tried to ignore the old man who had been right.

"Thank you," a female voice suddenly said and appeared behind the young officer. This officer immediately explained, "she said she knew you."

"Yes, I do," Inspector Lestrade said grumpy. Her again. At least, the normal one of the trio. "Mrs Flint, what can I do this time for you?"

"Madame Vastra wanted to let you know that she has found the perpetrator of your 'Pink Study', and that it has been the stagecoach driver indeed," Jenny Flint said with a slight smile.

"Oh, right. I will thank her later. When I have dealt with this piece of scum," he nodded to the postman.

"I see. You are capable of solving crimes on your own," Jenny said in a surprised tone.

"I had help," Inspector Lestrade admitted and pointed over to the strange man who seemed to be amazed by the birds in the sky.

"Doctor!" Jenny exclaimed.

"You know this man?" the Inspector said surprised.

"I'm a doctor?" this man said even more surprised.

"Who are you?" Lestrade wanted to know.

"I don't know," the strange man admitted. "Who am I?" He turned to Jenny who now looked surprised as well. "I wonder if I've asked this question before," he then muttered to himself.

"You're The Doctor," Jenny said in disbelief. "Don't you remember…again?"

The man with the grey hair shook his head.

Jenny turned to Inspector Lestrade. "Inspector, I will take this man home. He is a very good friend of Madame Vastra but I fear he has lost his most recent memories. Vastra expects you to pay her until tomorrow's sunset." She took The Doctor's arm and led him through the crowd.

"Do you really not remember anything?" she asked and looked at his most recent incarnation. It had only been a few days since he and Clara had left but more time seemed to have passed for him. His hair was much longer and he looked more serious. His clothes looked like he had been through something, but she could not define what it was. There still was this expression of being lonely and lost in his face. He had a small case of paranoia, looking back and into the side streets.

"Remember what? Why did you call me Doctor? Am I one?" he asked.

She did not answer.

Jenny led the Doctor back to 13 Paternoster Row where she lived with her wife Vastra and their housekeeper Strax. She opened the door and was surprised that Strax did not await them to mutter that the human race would soon be destroyed by the glory of the Sontaran Empire. He was probably tending the garden.

They entered the living room where Vastra was putting together the dishes from their tea time onto a dinner tray. "Doctor," she said when she noticed their appearance. "How nice of you to visit us again!"

"Everyone keeps calling me Doctor. Why does everyone do that?" The Doctor asked and turned to Jenny.

"He seems to have lost his memory," Jenny explained to her wife.

"I know this place," the twelfth Doctor muttered and started walking around in the living room, inspecting the plants and furniture.

"I found him at the crime scene where I encountered Lestrade. The Doctor was helping him to solve a murder," Jenny said and walked to kiss Madame Vastra who then went to observed The Doctor more closely.

"I'll bring him to sleep. Maybe this is all he needs. Get Strax; he's in the garden. Go to the lab and search the area for TARDIS signals. Maybe you will find some answers in the TARDIS. I believe he always carries a key with him, I will search him for that."

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Jenny warned her and walked off to find Strax. She found him watering the tomatoes while telling them to surrender and that they wouldn't be harmed.

"Strax," Jenny shouted and quickly explained him the situation.

They walked down to the laboratory they had erected in the cellar with all the future technology they could lay hands on. It had been quite an effort, finding alien pieces stranded in London and arriving at the scenes before Torchwood did. It was a very new institute who did not appreciate the work of Mme Vastra and her companions, but rather would like to see her and her alien friend locked up in a prison. Jenny started the computers they had found on a 22nd century runabout that had crashed in the north of America. It had been quite difficult to transport it here, but they had managed to do so. Jenny was still surprised what this machine could do and it made her sad that she would never live in the age of computers and digitals. It turned her unhappy quite often thinking about the future, thinking about how she was restrained to roughly 70 years of Earth history, and how her lovely wife would outlive her. How would Madame Vastra deal with that? She knew that she would live longer than Jenny. And Jenny sometimes saw in her eyes that she was thinking exactly the same. She noticed when Vastra looked away, and tried not to show Jenny how desperate she really felt.

"This is strange," Strax wondered aloud. "I read two TARDIS signals within a scanning perimeter of four miles."

"Two TARDIS's?" Jenny asked and had a look at the computer screen as well. "I will have a look at this signal here at Baker Street. You investigate the one in Hartnell Street, okay?"

Strax nodded and after meeting Madame Vastra, they departed. Jenny walked down to Baker Street which was more or less two miles away from the Paternoster Road. She did not have to look for it a long time, as she immediately spotted the blue police box which unobtrusively stood in the corner of the street. Strax had the key that Mme Vastra had taken off the Doctor, but perhaps Clara was still in the TARDIS or somewhere around. Jenny walked towards the blue box and knocked. She was surprised when she heard voices from inside, and even more surprised when an unknown man and an unknown woman opened the door.

"Hello, I'm The Doctor…but judging from your face, probably not the one you expected."


	14. Serial 4 - Episode 2

Episode 2 – An unexpected encounter

"Doctor…?" Jenny asked surprised.

The man with the long red-brown hair stepped out of the TARDIS followed by his black-haired, a little bit Spanish looking companion.

"Yes…do you know me?" The Doctor asked.

"Yes. Well…another incarnation of you." Jenny was surprised. She knew of The Doctor's ability to regenerate, but she didn't know it was still possible for her to meet an earlier version. "Later incarnations," she added. She breathed deeply and then introduced herself, "my name is Jenny Flint. My wife and our house keeper are friends of yours, Doctor…or rather we will be. I think we should go to our house, as there are definitely some very interesting questions to be asked and answered…"

On their way back, Jenny asked Aleja about where she came from. Jenny had heard that The Doctor had had many companions, but she doubted that they knew about the predecessors – or what had happened to them. She pulled out the key for the front door as she wasn't sure whether Strax had yet returned from his search of the other TARDIS – the older Doctor's TARDIS most probably. And she was right, he wasn't yet back. Madame Vastra instead was receiving them in the living room. She looked as surprised at the glance of yet another Doctor as was Aleja when she first time saw a Silurian.

"This is Madame Vastra, my wife," Jenny explained.

"You look young, Doctor," Mme Vastra said and had a closer look at the two time travellers.

"Something tells me I come here often in the future," The Doctor said, yet unsure how to handle the situation.

"I'm Aleja," Aleja introduced herself when Vastra paid her attention.

"I assume you are currently the one travelling with The Doctor," the lizard woman said.

"'Currently the one'?" Aleja asked and turned to The Doctor.

"It's…complicated," he said and tried to avoid the answer.

Before Aleja could further pose questions, Mme Vastra said, "and this is going to become very complicated indeed. If you wouldn't mind following me…" They walked upstairs and the lizard woman opened one of the many doors in the corridor. She switched on the light and they found the older Doctor staring motionlessly out of the window. He turned when they entered.

"Visitors? I feel like in hospital. I'm not in hospital, am I?" he asked confused.

"This…," Mme Vastra said and pointed at the younger Doctor, "this is you."

Both Doctors, as well as Aleja, looked surprised. "I'm sorry…I don't get it," Aleja interrupted the silence.

"When I regenerate, I take on another physical appearance," the 8th incarnation said. "I assume, this is how I look in the future…my god have I become old!"

"Oy, watch it!" the 14th incarnation, the 12th Doctor, said. He hadn't lost his rude character.

"We should…we should make contact," the younger Doctor proposed.

"Contact?" the 12th Doctor asked.

"Like when we first time met ourselves…"

"He has lost his memory," Mme Vastra informed.

"Oh, alright," the 8th Doctor understood and placed his right hand his future self's cheek. 12 twitched shortly, but then both closed their eyes.

"Contact," the 8th Doctor muttered, "Contact," the 12th Doctor repeated. They stood their absolutely immobilised, and Aleja watched keeping her breath. She glanced over to Jenny and the lizard, Mme Vastra, who seemed to be absolutely confident of what they were doing. They must have known the Doctor for ages. She wondered what his true age was, and if it was not impossible, regarding the laws of temporal physics, to meet one self.

The Doctors opened their eyes again. 12 stumbled a bit around, and then sank down onto the bed. His memories had returned, also the latest ones, and he was slowly beginning to understand who he actually was.

"I'm the Doctor," 12 muttered and looked at the other persons in the room.

"Yes, we are," 8 answered with a reassuring smile.

"What did you find out?" Jenny asked both of them, and then turned to the 12th Doctor, "what happened to you?"

12 sighed deeply, and 8 started to explain. "He…I…he…regained his complete memory – as far as possible, as he can obviously not remember that we have met. But he cannot remember the last 40 hours either."

"Wait a second," Aleja interrupted. "He can't remember you two met. Why?"

"Temporal paradox," 12 interrupted before 8 could continue. "If I remember what I did and said, couldn't I then just not do and say this? This would lead to a paradox. I am protecting myself from creating such, by losing my memory. I regain the memory I have gathered in my 8th incarnation at the same time as time is progressing for me. Right now, I can remember my speech from two different angles, but not the complete versions of it. Yet."

"Okay, okay, okay," Aleja said, trying not to think too much about it. "What is the last thing you remember doing before you came here?"

Before 12 could say something, they were interrupted by a loud noise in the hallway.

"Strax must have returned," Mme Vastra explained and she hurried downstairs, followed by the two girls and the two Doctors. Strax and two police officers were busy parking a huge blue box in the living room, and did not notice the curious observers. When Strax shooed the officers away, he noticed them. "I have retrieved the blue box!" he stated proudly and then looked at the 8th Doctor and Aleja.

"Who are you? Surrender to the glory of the Sontaran Empire!"

"I'm the Doctor, this is Aleja," he said and smiled, of course not taking him seriously.

"An imposter! Aha. Two Doctors, you cannot trick me!"

"Typical Sontaran. Can't count further than one," 12 said grumpily.

"He is me and I am him," 8 explained further, leaving an expression on Strax face that even more resembled a potato.

"It's your TARDIS, isn't it?" Aleja asked and turned to the 12th Doctor. "Can't we just check the last coordinates where you've landed and perhaps you'll remember more?"

12 was surprised about her clever suggestion, then passed the others, whispering "I know why I chose her" to his former incarnation, and walked straight to his TARDIS. All of them followed. When Aleja entered, she knew that no matter what, he would always surprise her. This other Doctor's TARDIS looked completely different, but still familiar. It had a silver-grey control hub in the middle, but the part above it rather looked like a zodiac helicopter. There were arm chairs and book shelves and a blackboard decorated the wall. It was very tidy; she knew from her Doctor that he would always have stuff and books lying around which made his main room look like a living room, while this interior here rather looked like what it actually was – a spaceship. She let her hand glide over the handrail and followed the others to have a look at the console. 12 pushed several buttons and angrily slapped the control table when it obviously did not obey.

"Are those your last coordinates?" Aleja asked and pointed at the screen where funny signs – Gallifreyan, as her Doctor had explained to her – appeared. Somehow these signs didn't seem too strange, although she was pretty sure she had never seen them before. She placed her hand on the edge of the control table, and suddenly several lights started blinking in different colours and the spaceship made a weird noise. Both Doctor incarnations looked alerted.

"She doesn't seem to like her," 12 noticed.

"It did the same when she touched my controls. I thought it was just my TARDIS having…well, a phase again," 8 mentioned.

Aleja shrugged. She had no clue what this meant, but obviously nothing important, as both Doctors' focus was back on the last set coordinates.

"Earth," 12 interpreted. "2026, Aberdeen. Some place called the Keel Miller Industry. Sounds familiar."

"I work there!" Aleja exclaimed and looked at all of them in surprise. "Well, I didn't yet in 2026, but remember when we met? The day the virus broke lose?" she asked her Doctor.

He nodded slightly and rechecked the coordinates.

"It's 18 months before I met you. What's in the cellar? This TARDIS seems to have landed several meters under the ground floor."

"Nothing. Well, there had been some failed experiments and when they had retrieved all the equipment, they had to bury whatever was down there… that's what they said…" Aleja turned to 12. "Do you think you're the reason for which they have filled up the cellar?"

"I don't remember," he reminded her. He looked a bit lost at his younger self, and the Paternoster gang who had not said anything for a while.

"What if we just went there again?" Jenny finally said something.

"We can't come back earlier," 8 replied. "It might lead to temporal paradoxes."

"But there was something else…" 12 muttered. "I've heard the name 'Keel Miller' before that."

"Yes, through me," 8 answered.

"No, after you…I think it was my…arrogant incarnation…"

Both 8 and Aleja raised an eyebrow. "There was something with Keel Miller on Mondas!"

"Mondas?" 8 asked. "I remember Mondas."

"Yes, but what you remember about Mondas isn't what I remember about Mondas. Well, it is, but I remember something else…something more!"

"Have we been to Mondas twice?"

"Yes…well, I have."

Madame Vastra leaned over to Aleja and whispered, so that Strax and Jenny could hear as well, "shall we go back into our house? I believe it's time for our afternoon tea."

They nodded and silently sneaked out of the TARDIS while the two Doctors kept arguing.

Strax muttered something about melting tomatoes with acid, and Mme Vastra went to collect the afternoon newspaper, so Aleja joined Jenny in the kitchen.

"How long have you know Vastra?" Aleja asked while Jenny heated water on the hob.

"For nearly four years now," she answered proudly.

"You have been quick getting married!"

"I wouldn't say it was love on the first glance, but she definitely had something that made me take notice. And I have to say, she is just the woman of my life!" Jenny's face glowed when she was talking about her partner. "Have you ever fallen in love?"

Aleja sadly shook her head. "I've had some boyfriends, some admirers, but I knew about each of them that it wouldn't last."

"Then someone will come for you one day."

"You believe in that?"

Jenny nodded. "Everyone will find someone, one day, sooner or later."

"And the Doctor?"

"He was married. He found someone."

"Married? What happened to her?"

"She died, I think. With the rest of his family. Although his granddaughter should still be alive."

Aleja wanted to ask further questions when Vastra joined them. "Look at what I've found in the papers!" she announced.

Jenny grabbed the front page and read out loudly, "Dr Keel Miller, famous biologist and chemist at Keel Miller Labs has been arrested earlier this morning by Police Office department Torchwood. They claim that said scientist has conducted research on living organisms. Shortly before his arrest though, Mr Miller had triggered an explosion at his laboratories in the North of the city. He is currently held by Torchwood for questioning." Jenny looked up and noticed that the two Doctor had settled their argument and had appeared in the small kitchen as well.

"We need to go there," 12 said.

"I join you," 8 and Aleja said at the same time.

"We'll keep the tea warm for your return," Vastra said and smiled at Jenny, who seemed a bit disappointed.

As 12's TARDIS was the closest, they entered his. Aleja observed the Doctors who each tried to be the one to steer the TARDIS. Boys and their vehicles, she thought, but finally they did move. She hoped that they landed where they wanted to, and she was positively surprised. When she stepped out of the TARDIS, the houses looked the same as before, so it was probably still London. She walked around the blue box and saw that they were definitely at the right place. There were several people staring at the ruins. A house, not more than two storeys, had collapsed, and just some walls were left standing. The street was full of dust and debris and two police officer guarded the scene. Some men of the fire brigade were walking through the rubble, loading pieces of stone onto a stage coach. The two Doctors and Aleja walked to the crowd of gapers.

"He definitely succeeded in covering his tracks," 8 noted.

"We should talk to Torchwood," 12 said. "We just need to know where their headquarters are these days."

"No need for that," a voice behind them said.

All three of them turned around, and judging from 12's loud sighing, he did not seem very keen on meeting the man who Aleja and 8 had never seen before.

"Jack!" 12 said. "What are you doing here?"

"Working for Torchwood…Doctor, right? You have changed…you've become older… and grumpier," Jack said and then looked at the unknown faces. He shook 8's and Aleja's hand, hers extra-long time, and introduced himself, "my name is Captain Jack Harkness." He was surprised that the Doctor did not interrupt him already. "So what brings you here?"

"We wanted to find out more about Keel Miller… it either seems that he has an incredibly long lifespan or he is a time traveller," Aleja explained.

"Well…I have an incredibly long life span…and some other very long things…"

"Jack!" 12 now did interrupt his flirting. "We need to see Dr Miller."

"He fled two hours ago. We had started interrogating him, but he escaped. We're still trying to figure out how, but he seemed to having hypnotised one of our members and then went on to steal some alien technology stuff…things… and ran for it. That's why I returned to this site… I had hoped that he might come back."

12 and 8 looked at each other, and probably talked without even opening their mouths. Jack turned back to Aleja, "so with which incarnation are you travelling? The grumpy one or the handsome one?"

She laughed. It had been quite a while since someone had been this flirty with her. "The younger one," she answered and pointed at the one with the longer red-brown hair.

"Fancy some variety some time? I can also time travel… I don't have a nice TARDIS but–"

"Shut up!" 12 interrupted.

"We need to know everything you know," 8 added, in a much nicer tone.

Jack nodded, but handed Aleja some sort of wristband. "Simple vortex manipulator, very easy version. Just press these buttons," he showed her, "and it immediately brings you to me. In case you're up to some adventure." She accepted it with a surprised look on her face, but also defended it from 12 who wanted to grab it. She put the wristband into her jeans pocket. No need to rush things.

"I do have a photo from Dr Miller. It's been taken with a late 20th century camera, so the quality is quite good," he said and searched his coat for said photo. He pulled it out and showed it.

"I know that man!" 8 and 12 shouted at the same time.


	15. Episode 4 - Serial 3

Episode 3 – KEEL MILLER

The TARDIS made very weird noises and it did not help that The Doctor kicked the main console. He wondered where he had placed his hammer; using it had always worked out. Despite the rocking, the TARDIS landed – more or less without problems. He stood up again and checked the readings on the computer. He had definitely left his last coordinates, Victorian London. He scanned once more, and the screen gave the same result. The technology used in this so-called Keel Miller Research Facility was far too advanced for the early 21st century. He needed to find out where this kind of technology came from. He put on his coat and noticed that Clara had sent him an SMS. 'Be careful', he read and smiled. She guessed he was up to something – as he nearly always was.

He stepped out of the TARDIS and noticed that he had landed quite a bit away from the plant. He looked up into the sky, and tasted the wind. At least the year was more or less right, 2026. He walked through the ankle-high snow on the road. Although snow had fallen, it wasn't cold, because the sun gave not only light but also warmth. It took him a while to walk up the mountain and arrive at the gates.

"Can I help you, sir?" a security guard with a machine gun walked towards him.

"Er, yes," The Doctor said and presented his psychic paper.

"Quality Assurance…oh my god, I had no idea you would pay us a visit, Dr Smith. I can assure you that you will find the lab in a very good state of being, but I don't know whether anyone inside knows about your visit."

"It's a wee surprise," The Doctor answered and followed the security guard to his little cabin. He called someone, and then explained, "Just walk towards these doors over there. It's the main entrance. I got Dr Chesterfield to welcome you. He is one of our top scientists, and he will show you around in the labs."

The Doctor nodded and continued his walk through the snow. Arriving at the main doors, he already saw a man with a lab coat, who definitely was a typical scientist. However, he seemed strangely familiar, but the Doctor couldn't quite remember him. He often deleted faces when they did not seem important, and perhaps he had done so with him.

"Dr John Smith?"

They shook hands and The Doctor immediately noticed the temperature difference comparing the outside with the entrance hall.

"You will see that our labs are equipped only with state-of-the-art technology and the latest devices. We strictly work after guidelines like Good Laboratory Praxis, and Good Documentation Praxis in the research labs. We also have an ISO170025 accredited lab. Is there anything specific you want to see?"

"There is research being done on the enhancement of humans?" he asked while they were entering a lift.

"Human cells. Humans would be a bit too much, wouldn't it be? And we already have problems with getting annual permissions by the independent government. Since the Eugenic Wars we have to be careful. And of course we are," Chesterfield explained proudly. The Doctor just nodded.

"Tell me more about the devices you use. Where were they manufactured?"

"Oh, I think this depends on the labs. All of our devices are checked every three months, and we perform standard runs every morning and always use internal standards. We are very proud on our many GC-MS and NMR devices. We even received two new mass spectrometers this month, as a friendly donation. They were placed in the research laboratories in the cellar."

They entered one of the biology laboratories.

"What is in the cellars? Also biology laboratories?"

"Cybergenetics."

"Human engineering?"

"Cell engineering."

"What exactly is it they are doing?"

"I don't know. But I can call a colleague of mine who is working down there once you have checked the labs on this floor," Chesterfield offered.

The Doctor nodded. They walked around the lab, and the scientist explained many things that The Doctor did not even bother to listen to. Returning to the main corridor, the Doctor excused himself and wandered off, pretending to be looking for the bathroom. When he was sure that he was out of sight of Chesterfield, he took the stairs down to the basement. The walls weren't complete white anymore, but consisted of grey bricks. Probably the oldest part of the building, he thought. Nearly all of Aberdeen had been built with grey granite blocks, which sometimes made the city appear rather triste and sad.

The cellar did not seem to have the same footprint as the building standing upon it, and the corridors were much smaller. The Doctor opened some doors, but they were mainly leading to storage rooms that stank of mice and chemicals. He reached the end of the corridor, and noticed that one door looked different. He heard another door being opened, and quickly had to decide whether to enter or not. He did so and hoped that whoever had entered the corridor, had not seen him sneaking into this lab. He was glad that no one was in here, and even happier when he realised that he had found what he had been looking for.

These devices, although two GC-MS were present, did not even look remotely human-manufactured. In some of them he recognised Borg technology, one bio-chamber was probably stolen from a Silurian lab, and many other devices, such as microscopes or 3D-scanners-and-printers from Earth's 28th century were packed into this tiny room. Whoever worked here, was a genius. Everything was neatly connected and made compatible in order to work. The Doctor tapped the computer next to the door. The software was 24th century Federation, but the writing had been altered. It wasn't English, or any other human language. It was Gallifreyan!

At this moment, he heard the door being opened behind him, but before he could turn around, he felt a short, localised pain at the back of his head and then everything became black.

He did not know for how long he had been unconscious but when he woke up, he was standing – or rather hanging – at the wall, chained to a Borg regeneration chamber with his hands and legs fixed with black cables to the wall so that he couldn't move. His vision returned and he immediately recognised the person standing opposite to him with a huge and evil grin on his face.

"It has been some time, Doctor…and honestly, I remember you looking differently…haven't we been very careful with our lives?" he mocked him.

"Master," The Doctor exclaimed and The Master's grin became even bigger when hearing his name.

"I had not thought it would take you that long to find me…how did you?"

"I didn't…I just read some very unusual signals for 21st century Earth," 12 admitted. How was this even possible? The Master had never mentioned this encounter to one of The Doctor's previous incarnations. After all, The Master would meet the younger Doctor after this…probably. 12 tried not to think about it. It was The Master, and it did not matter that this was neither the President-incarnation or Missy. However, he was a tiny bit pleased to see the last 'real' incarnation of his old friend, the incarnation before his quest for a longer life had destroyed the last rest of their friendship.

"So you did not know that I was behind all this?"

"No."

"And you have no idea what I am planning to do?"

"Take over the world?"

"Oh Doctor, you disappoint me. Think about it…"

"It's probably your name…again. Keel Miller…isn't it?"

"Change the word order," The Master asked, obviously proud of what he had thought of this time. He had no idea yet that he would continue this tradition…coincidentally or not…Tremas…Mister Saxon…

"Emil Keller!" the Doctor gasped loudly. How could he have been so blind? "It's the name of the inventor of this machine you had used to bring out all the fear in a person…" The Doctor sighed. The Master was a genius, no doubt.

The Master laughed. "And have you figured out what I am doing here?"

"Are you trying to make yourself a Cyberman?"

"Don't be foolish, Doctor. The combination of organic life with inorganic materials had been one of my aims, yes, but I have found a better way. You know that I am living the last of my lives… my cells won't regenerate anymore…at least not naturally."

"You want to trigger artificial cell regeneration!" The Doctor realised, and somehow this sounded strangely familiar. As familiar as Chesterfield, and these laboratories, but last time it had been night when he was here, and something had gone wrong… didn't he meet a scientist who occupied exactly with this topic, the regeneration of cells? "But how? How do you want to get hold of this kind of energy?"

"It's easy, Doctor, when you think about it. Our own civilisation formed the foundation for that," The Master said and pressed a button at one of the computers. The brick wall opposite to the Doctor suddenly started to slide away, and what The Doctor saw was one of his greatest nightmares. Two Weeping Angels, their hands before their eyes, their bodies chained to the wall, a force field flickering around them.

"I don't have to collect energy, I just have to drain them," The Master said. "I have placed my facilities all over the universe, throughout different times. It took me some time and the robbery of important UNIT files, approximately 23 years ago in Earth's timeline, to establish a personality here, and plan this building. Everywhere and every time, scientists are working at the same goal – my goal. On Mondas, on Bajor – although I heard my Weeping Angels had been destroyed when the supply ship had stopped for Cardassia IV…"

"You're insane," The Doctor muttered and rolled his eyes.

"Thank you," his arch-enemy said, and turned back to his computers. "Now, if you excuse me, I have some lives to gain. Unfortunately, I cannot leave you here, at least not as you are right now. But luckily for you, I have retrieved these on one of my journeys into the 24th century – also a preferred era of you, isn't it?" He held up a small glass with weirdly looking, metallic bugs.

"Romulan mind probes," The Master explained. "But don't worry, I have reprogrammed them. You will lose your short-time memory, and will probably also use consciousness for about three or four days. Enough time to finish my work here and continue in another one of my many locations throughout this galaxy." He took a forceps and walked towards The Doctor. Carefully he placed two of these tiny bugs in the Doctor's left ear. The Doctor shook his head but it did not do him any good.

"These mind probes remind me a bit of bugs I had once found on Ceti Alpha Six…marvellous creatures, born so small, but they can grow – preferably in one's head. Brain is their preferred meal."

The Doctor tried to shake his head, but the small probes worked their way through his ear system.

"Don't worry, Doctor. They're biologically degradable."

Pearls of sweat ran down the Doctor's forehead and black dots appeared in his vision. The last thing he heard before losing consciousness once again was The Master's well too known evil laughter.

The Doctor awoke by something wet touching his face. Instinctively, he licked it and was awake at once. Gasoline. He jumped up and noticed that this liquid was leaking from a wall. He stumbled – or rather fell and got up several times – towards the door. He opened it – and starred into the face of a Weeping Angel. He looked down. Don't look it in the eye, he thought, and wondered at the same time how he knew this. Because he didn't know anything else. Basic instincts, that's what's left, he thought and passed the Weeping Angel. Backwards, he tried to make it to the end of the corridor. Where was he? Why were the Weeping Angels trying to blow this place up? Who was he?

He felt a door knob behind him and opened the door. He was in a staircase. Hastily, he ran upstairs. The ground floor had windows and outside it was pitch-black. It had become night. Was he brought here at daylight? Where was 'here'? He looked around. It seemed to be some sort of laboratory facility. Suddenly, an alarm went off. Had the Angels laid a fire downstairs? The Doctor stumbled towards what he believed to be the main entrance. In addition to the fire alarm, a similarly sounding burglary alarm went off. The Doctor ran for it, when security guards showed up from nowhere. No one spotted him as they were running towards the building. The Doctor jumped over a barrier and ran down the hill. Who was he? Where was he? Where had he seen those stone aliens before? He stumbled and fell and slid several meters through the snow that was shimmering silver in the moonlight. It was full moon. A bad sign? Suddenly, The Doctor spotted something familiar. A blue box. Didn't he have keys for that? He fumbled something out, and fitted it in the keyhole of the TARDIS. He was surprised when making his way in. "Bigger on the inside," he muttered. He still couldn't really hold himself and had to grab the console. He arbitrarily pushed buttons, and accidentally set the TARDIS to return to its latest coordinates – more or less. When the TARDIS entered the time vortex, The Doctor lost consciousness again…

Back in 1894, Aleja knew that something was going on, and it definitely wasn't something good.

"Well, who is he?" she asked, judging from the concerned faces of both Doctors, this man was someone very familiar.

"His name is The Master," 8 finally explained.

"Wait…this is The Master?" Jack said surprised. Aleja raised an eyebrow. Did everyone here know this Master?

"Well, an earlier incarnation of him. The last one of his real life…" 12 became silent. "I remember," he said after a pause. "I met him. When I visited Keel Miller Industries in Aberdeen, I met him. He temporarily erased my memory with some mind probes. He was draining the energy of Weeping Angels…he said something about experiments on Mondas and Bajor."

"Bajor?" Aleja asked. This sounded familiar. "The Ardanan ship that brought supplies to Cardassia had Weeping Angels in their cargo bay which were to be shipped to Bajor!"

"His plan is to artificially enhance cell regeneration. That's why he has built research facilities all throughout time and space. With several races and several technologies of different time spans combined, he surely would find a solution!" 12 said.

"Oh my God," Aleja suddenly realised. "I have worked in this field, too. I'm writing my Master's thesis about it!"

"Well, you certainly had no chance of knowing," the 8th Doctor comforted her. "On the other hand, you had come quite close, haven't you?"

"Do you have any idea where The Master might have fled to?" 12 asked Jack.

The Captain shook his head. "No idea. But his vortex manipulator was destroyed. He didn't have any chance to leave."

"You said he stole some lab equipment?" 8 asked.

Jack nodded. "Yes, it might be that he builds a new lab, or that he travels to another country. I don't know."

"Who exactly is he anyway? Some sort of enemy of yours?" Aleja wondered aloud.

"Not some sort of. He is our arch-enemy," 12 explained. "He's a fellow Timelord, but a renegade. He's broken more laws in this universe than I dare to count. On his hunt for eternal life, he respects no rules…"

"If he's a Timelord, couldn't he just use his TARDIS?"

"Well, yeah, if he knew that we were here, and where we parked our TARDIS," 8 admitted.

"With the equipment he stole, he could be looking for non-human technology in this country," Jack admitted.

"I think we should return to Mme Vastra's house, don't you think?" 8 proposed and the others agreed. They said goodbye to Jack, who again tried to persuade Aleja to visit him in a while, and then they walked back to their friends' house. Aleja could not stop thinking about this Master. Did The Doctor really have a nemesis? What was it like when they met? And why did she have this feeling that she had seen this man before? Had it been in the labs somewhere, at some time when she had been working on her Master's thesis. It seemed such a long time ago, but actually, she was still working on it, and not a day shall have passed since she had run away with The Doctor.

How come The Doctor had never told her about The Master? On the other hand, she hadn't told her about this blonde bitch who was studying with her and who she regarded as her nemesis. But this was something completely different. The Master was actually breaking rules, and this had nothing to do with educational rivalry – or did it?

When they arrived at the house, Aleja immediately noticed that something was wrong. The front door was slightly ajar, and it was silent in the street. They ran the last few meters and 12 carefully pushed the door open. Strax was lying in the entry corridor, motionlessly. 8 immediately kneed down next to him. "He's got a pulse," he muttered and further checked his body.

12 and Aleja walked down to the living room. Vastra lay in glass shivers, heavily bleeding. 12 rushed over to her, while Aleja removed her jacket and gave it to The Doctor so that he could press it onto her wounds to stop the bleeding.

Vastra was barely conscious. He carried her onto the couch and completely in shock, Aleja joined. She started tearing the biggest glass splinters out of the green skin and pressed a part of her favourite jacket onto the flesh. Vastra tried to mutter something.

"He's after…TARDIS…Doctor…"

They heard something shatter in the backyard. Aleja and The Doctor looked at each other. Aleja was the first to run. 12 wanted to shout that she should be careful, but she was already out of the house. When Aleja turned around, she did not only see the TARDIS who Strax had brought into the garden, but a man standing in front of it, about to open the door, as he already held the key in his hand. He wasn't tall, he had grey hair and a beard, and looked at Aleja in surprise.

He turned back to the TARDIS and tried to open the door. Aleja ran towards him, and managed to grab him when he had just kicked the door open, but he pushed her away. They struggled for a few seconds, until he draw a knife and pushed it into her stomach. She cringed, he tore the knife out and disappeared in the TARDIS. She felt an urge to vomit, and an incredible pain as warm blood trickled down her belly and dropped on the floor.

She did not realise the pain at first, but it slowly began to hurt. When she looked up again, she saw the 12th Doctor rushing towards her, and behind her she heard the TARDIS noise of disappearance. Something was not right. She felt weak, she felt the blood, she felt the pain. But she did not die. She did not fall to the ground or loose unconsciousness.

She looked at her hands. They felt warm. It wasn't the blood. It was something else inside her. She looked back at The Doctor. He seemed shouting at her, he grabbed her, wanted to stop the bleeding with his hands. She shook her head. This wasn't right. What was happening to her? Why did she feel this relieve? Without knowing what was happening to her, she pushed The Doctor as hard away as she could.

Just when she saw the 8th Doctor running into the garden, her whole body felt to explode and she burst into regenerative flames.

 **Please write me what you think.**


	16. Serial 4 - Episode 4

**Because I've noticed that nobody cares about my story, I am going to upload all at once now. I had hoped that there was the chance for a story that was not featuring 10/11 and some super hot companion who has a love story with The Doctor (I only used 10 in the first story as bait... 10 is my least favourite Doctor...).**

 **Here you go, all at once: (If anyone is still reading though.)**

Episode 4 – ALEJA MOIHD

Aleja's regeneration took long, and the golden energy fluctuated, until it vanished completely. She hadn't changed her face, she didn't have enough power for that. She stumbled towards the 12th Doctor but then fainted into his arms. He caught her and carried her past 8 inside the house. He put her down on the couch next to Vastra. Behind them, Jenny woke up.

"What's happened?" she asked and despite not feeling too awake, she stumbled toward her wife who was still unconscious and who had a large wound at her head.

"The Master…he attacked you to get to my TARDIS," the 12th Doctor said.

"Did you stop him?"

"We couldn't."

"What happened to Aleja?" Jenny asked and looked at the girl.

"She…regenerated." 12 exchanged looks with 8 who shrugged. "She can't be a Timelord."

"She could be. She just never knew."

 **I don't even ask for reviews anymore. Apparently it's asked too much of you to spend 30 seconds telling me what you think about my story which took me several months to plan and write.**

"But…how is this possible? All Timelords are gone!" Jenny exclaimed.

"Gone?" 8 asked.

"Long story," 12 changed the subject. "If she really is a Timelord…and she just forgot…"

"She could have had this fob watch thingy you once told me about," Jenny said.

"No," 12 explained. "She must have been human for that. And then she would have just died. She was a Timelord, but she didn't know." He felt her pulse. "She's got two hearts…but her pulse is strange. It's nearly human. One of her hearts must be slower, or nearly inactive."

8 also felt her pulse. He nodded.

"Tell me about how our people is gone. What did you mean by that?" 8 asked.

"Spoilers."

"I will forget these events anyway."

"You don't want to know."

"Tell me. Now!" 8 demanded. He couldn't stand that his future incarnations just casually mentioned that his people were lost. "What happened?" 8 asked.

"There was a war…an all destroying war. We lost."

"They're…they're not all dead?"

"No, they're just lost in a parallel pocket universe," 12 said. Upon 8's questioning glance, he added, "it's really complicated. You'll remember. You've even been to the war, seven or eight times already. You just keep forgetting. But one day you'll remember."

8 wanted to say something, but they noticed that Aleja started moving again. He kneed down next to her on the sofa. "How do you feel?" he asked gently.

"Where am I?" she muttered.

"Post-regeneration amnesia," 12 commented. "Should be gone in a while."

"Unless you're me…" 8 mentioned.

"Well…" 12 admitted that he once did have problems with not remembering anything.

"What?" Aleja asked and tried to sit up. She felt as if the world was spinning around her. Slowly, her view got clearer and the Doctor began to outline. "I remember running after The Master," she remembered loudly. "He stabbed me with a knife…" She looked at the coffee table and spotted the bloody knife. In panic, she touched her belly and tried to search for a wound.

"Don't worry…don't worry, you're fine," 8 calmed her down.

"But…the blood," she said. Indeed she did have a huge blood stain on her pullover, which had dyed her yellow-brown pullover in a dark red.

"You…er…you…" 8 looked up to 12 for some help.

12 just shrugged his shoulders. "You regenerated."

"I did what?" She didn't understand.

"I told you that when a Timelord dies, he regenerates…takes on another form and lives again," her Doctor explained.

She nodded. It took her a while, and her eyes widened. "But I'm not a Timelord!"

"Apparently you are," 12 said and looked deeply into her eyes to find out whether she might be lying. But all he could spot was sincere confusion.

"I'm not," she laughed. "I didn't change my face."

"Yes, that's indeed weird," 8 admitted.

"I once didn't change my face either," 12 said.

8 looked at him in surprise. "Spoilers?"

"Spoilers."

"Let's solve this the easy way," Jenny said. They hadn't noticed that she had left, but she had returned with a small hand-held device which she pointed at Aleja. "This is a Bolian scanner. It will find out what species you are. But it is only calibrated with species known to the Federation until the year 2378. It coincidentally ended up in East England when a Federation runabout crashed at the coast three months ago."

The device beeped and showed a result. "50% human," she read out. "And 50% unknown…" She looked at Aleja who looked – and felt – more shocked than ever in her life.

8 reached out his hand to feel her pulse again. "Suppose she's half-human and half-Timelord…she could have two hearts, but one is beating less actively…it could be the reason for her weird pulse."

"Well, when I went to see a doctor, they always said I had a strange pulse. But they thought it was stress or something," she admitted.

"And the regeneration?" 12 asked. "She might not have exactly 13 lives, as we do. And her regeneration energy released at the death might not be enough to change her body, just enough to heal her… it all makes sense."

"It makes no sense," Aleja interrupted. She felt helpless. They were talking about her like a test subject of an experiment while she was sitting there, not knowing what to think. "I know my mother. She was human. Which Timelord then should be my father?"

"Well, you never knew your father," 12 said.

"We could go to Gallifrey and try to get The Creator persuaded to do a DNA test," 8 proposed.

"But your people are gone," Jenny reminded him.

"No, not from his perspective yet," 12 said. "And my TARDIS is gone with The Master anyway. It could be worth a try. Let's do it."

8 jumped up. Aleja looked helplessly to Jenny, who also seemed to be confused.

"Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Flint," 8 and 12 said at the same time.

8 helped Aleja up.

"Who is this 'creator'?" she asked when they walked outside.

"Oh, he's a scientist. He specialised in Genetics. When he looked into the Untempered Schisms, which we have to do when we Timelords are children, he was named 'The Creator'. But I don't know why."

"Oh, I do," 12 answered. "But spoilers," he explained, and that remained all the explanation they got.

"So what is his real name?"

"I think most people forgot. We just use 'The Creator', as The Master chose his name and I chose mine," 8 said.

While they walked down the streets to where 8 had parked his TARDIS, the thoughts in Aleja's head danced like crazy. How could she be an alien? Or rather half-alien? How come no one had noticed all her life? She had two hearts, and she admitted that her pulse was a bit weird. She had looked for heart diseases on the internet, but her mum had just said that she was special, alright but special. Had she known? Is that why she never told her about her father? Was she ashamed for having created a half-human baby? But she always loved her. Was there another reason? Had her father returned to her planet? What about the story that he had stolen UNIT files, and that this had been his only reason for pretending love. Was this story true? Was he an alien criminal? Or had she made this story up, just to hide the truth from her?

Right now Aleja was really angry with her mother and hoped she could return home and ask her the million question which she wanted to pose. She entered the TARDIS after the two Doctors and again saw them arguing about the controls. But it then remained to 8 to fly the TARDIS, and 12 grumpily sat down in one of the armchairs. Aleja sat down opposite to him.

"Tell me about Gallifrey," she said.

12 hesitated. "It was a beautiful planet. Golden grass, gold-red skies, a huge capital whose glass dome could be seen from space."

She saw that it hurt him thinking about it and felt sorry, "what happened?"

12 looked over to 8 who was busy keeping the TARDIS in the time vortex. He leaned forwards. "War," he whispered. "A long and all-destroying war. It destroyed more planets than I want to count, and more people died than I ever dare to think about. Gallifrey became lost in a different universe…but you must not tell your Doctor. It is his future. All these decisions still lie upon him. If you told him anything, he might change his decisions and this may alter all of reality…and create a paradox!"

She nodded. The Doctor seemed terribly afraid of paradoxes. And she believed to understand why. She had once heard the story of a man travelling to see Pompeji, and then accidentally he became responsible for the outbreak of the Vesuvius. Or that someone once touched themselves in the past, and suddenly people ceased to exist. Her mother had told her a lot about aliens and other worlds, but she had taken them as nice stories, not as actual happenings.

"Can't you bring them back, your people?" she wondered aloud.

"I'm trying to…but it is very complicated. I don't even know whether I want them back in this universe. They weren't all…good, you know."

She didn't know. She didn't understand. But it had already been enough information since she woke up. The TARDIS started to rock.

"It's noticing you on board," 8 said to 12. "And it doesn't like you visiting your people in another time."

"She'll manage," 12 said and joined 8 at the main console.

Aleja leaned back in the armchair. How could everything go wrong like this? Less than three weeks ago she had been a normal girl, studying for her degree, and hoping to get into a PhD program. And here she was, on an alien spaceship – which wasn't so alien to her – with twice the same men she had just run away with, trying to find out her true origin and her true…race. She just couldn't believe this was happening to her.

The TARDIS stopped rocking and it felt as if they had landed. Aleja was scared of going out. What if she met her father on this planet? She had hated her father for ages, but what if there was a reasonable explanation for everything? There better be, she thought and stood up. She needed to find out who she was, and where she belonged to.

When she stepped out of the TARDIS, she thought that she had started dreaming. This planet was indeed beautiful. Just as 12 had predicted. And there was no other way to describe it than astonishingly beautiful. They had landed inside a building. It seemed like a corridor, but it was huge. The ceiling must be 30 meters high, she guessed, and to the wall left to her consisted of big glass windows that allowed her to take a look at the city.

"Welcome to Arcadia, Gallifrey's second largest city and main seat of the government," 8 said with a proud smile.

Aleja had visited several planets with The Doctor, but none of them were comparable to this one. The buildings were built of light-brown bricks, everything seemed perfectly arranged as if the city had carefully been built by one architect before anyone had been allowed to move in. And behind the marge of the city, she saw mountain ranges growing from the earth high up into the sky, and she guessed snow to be lying on the highest tops. A few lights shone, which looked like day-stars, hovering just slightly above the ground. She remembered what 12 had said. A war to destroy it all, she thought. How could someone invade such a beautiful planet, and burn it to ashes?

"We should go," 12 said and 8 grabbed Aleja's hand and they led her through endless corridors and staircases.

"The Creator's lab was moved into the governmental complex five years ago. No one knows why, but people think that the government wants him to do research on a very specific topic…some rumours say it is about genetic engineering which is forbidden on this planet."

"It is," 12 agreed with his previous incarnation. He sighed, but then explained, "The tensions between the Timelords and the Daleks are growing. Some of the High Council fear it might end in a war – which it will. The Creator has been asked to engineer a Timelord to…to become a soldier. Perfected for war."

"Did it work? Did he manage to create such a perfect soldier?" Aleja asked.

"Two." The way 12 answered this question made clear that he did not want to go deeper into this topic, so 8 and Aleja kept silence. 8 knew he was going to forget this adventure anyway…and only remember it many years later.

They arrived in a sideway of a corridor at a double door. 8 rang the doorbell. After a while, a man opened and looked at them with the typical confusion of a scientist. He wasn't tall, had dark hair that was about to turn grey, and he wore half-moon shaped glasses.

"Doctor?" he said towards the 8th Doctor.

"Yes," this Doctor answered with a smile. "These are…me, and a friend of mine, Aleja," he pointed to his companions. "May we come in?"

"Sure, sure," The Creator said and let them in. He hastily piled up some electronic devices that looked like tablets to Aleja, and stored them away. His laboratory, which was also his office, was very long and books and such tablets were piling up everywhere. There were tables with electronic surfaces, a transparent blackboard which showed the image of a strange DNA strand rotating around itself, and the ceiling consisted of formulas and DNA sequences which seemed to move like leaves in a sea.

"How can I help you, Doctor? I haven't heard from you in a long time. I heard you were supposed to bring The Master's remains back to Gallifrey?"

"Yes, long story short: He caught himself in the Eye of Harmony in my TARDIS," 8 said.

Judging from The Creator's face, Aleja guessed that this wasn't the best thing to happen to someone.

"And what brings us here…is a very complicated matter," 12 said. It was difficult for him not to see The Creator as he was many years later when the war had devastated half the universe already. He couldn't believe that this man was responsible for the creation of the most dangerous killers that ever originated on Gallifrey. "Could you…have a look at Aleja, and tell us…well, we think she is half-Timelord and half-human."

The Creator looked at her in surprise. "Half human and half Timelord? I have never heard of this before…except for…" He looked at the Doctors in a strange way that Aleja could not understand. How long did these Timelords know each other? Did they have a common past? Had something happened between them? Or was it another very complicated story to be told another time…?

"Well, except for a daughter-clone of mine and my Timelord-wife with human parents…," 12 said with a smile, and both his earlier self and The Creator ignored this comment.

"Would you mind lying onto this table over there," The Creator said and pointed at a table at the other side of the lab. Aleja walked up the three stairs that led to a higher floor of the lab and did as she was told. The scientist activated the table with a button at its side, and the table surface started blinking and beeping.

Aleja looked scared at the Doctors, but they just nodded and signalled her to stay calm. A blue ring appeared at the end of the table and moved all over her body. Aleja looked around. She saw framed pictures at the wall next to her, the only wall that wasn't filled with science…stuff. Most of them showed a happy family, probably The Creator with his wife and son. His son in kindergarten, at school, at the academy with a friend of his. Somehow both boys looked familiar to her.

"You can sit up again," The Creator said and she did so. He looked at the computer screen that was hanging down from the ceiling. "Two hearts…dual vein system. Your left heart is beating weaker than your right one. You are definitely a hybrid."

"I knew there was something…" 8 muttered.

The other looked at him, so he had to explain, "Aleja is far more intelligent than an average human." He turned to her, "the way you built this device for opening the doors in the research facility? Your Postgraduate project? Even a very experienced human scientist would have difficulties understanding this."

"Can you take a DNA test and compare her DNA with the database?" 12 asked. "She doesn't know her father."

"Sure," The Creator answered, walked over to a cupboard.

12 turned to Aleja, "when a child is born on Gallifrey, a DNA sample is taken and his profile stored in the DNA archive of our planet. These archives are time-insusceptible, which means that whenever you enter a profile, it will be added to the archive at any time. You can find a DNA match of a person who hasn't even been born yet."

"That's why only very few people have access to this DNA database," 8 added.

The Creator came back with a small device. He activated it, and it produced a small surface that gloomed in green. "Put your finger on this. It will prick, but don't worry. It'll take a few cells of your skin and analyse the nucleus for DNA," he explained.

He then plugged in this device at the computer screen. It showed a running search of looking for someone with compatible DNA. Suddenly, a beeping signalled that a 47% match had been found. The search went further, but The Creator interrupted it.

"47%?" she asked. "Is it due to mutation?"

The Creator nodded. "A child never possesses exactly 50% of its parents' DNA. Let's have look." He opened the file and suddenly all of them fell silent. No one dared to breathe when the screen showed whose DNA matched the one of Aleja.

The Master was Aleja's father. Aleja was The Master's daughter.

(ALEJA MOIHD = HIJA DEL AMO = Daughter of The Master)


	17. Serial 5 - Episode 1

Serial 5 – The Struggle for Survival

Episode 1 – Swapping the TARDIS

Martha didn't remember the way from the edge of the town to the plant as so long. She needed to stop once in a while to gasp for air. Slowly, it was becoming warmer when the suns rose again, but still she seemed to be freezing to death.

"Don't you think he'll see us approaching?" she asked The Doctor.

"I think he's too busy converting the other scientists…"

Martha hoped so…

They entered the building complex and Martha had expected the air to be warmer.

"He probably turned off the main power which included the heating," The Doctor explained before she could ask. "Let's go up to the 5th storey. If we can make it to the TARDIS I could connect the TARDIS controls to the main computer and despite the power outage I can give it enough power to destroy every research that has been done here. Without the data, Dr Hunton can't continue his process efficiently and he cannot enhance his genetically engineered status into what we would call Cybermen!"

"Whatever you say, Doctor," Martha agreed and tiptoed up the stairs. They stopped when they heard metal scratching and a woman shout. Very silently they continued upwards and The Doctor looked through the half-opened door.

"What is it?" Martha wanted to know.

"He's connecting himself to the transformed scientists. I think he makes himself the Cyber-Controller. We need to hurry!"

As silently as they both could, they walked forwards.

"Which lab number did you land the TARDIS in?" Martha whispered.

"I didn't land the TARDIS, you did."

"Don't you get smart now!" Martha hissed. She was really fed up with The Doctor's behaviour right now but had no real choice. She had to do what The Doctor said to stay alive.

"It's right here," The Doctor said and pointed to a biology laboratory. She nodded and slowly they opened the door. It creaked more than she remembered and more than it should have. Because the noises from the bioengineering laboratories nearby stopped suddenly. The Doctor pushed the door open with force.

What Martha saw scared her stiff. The TARDIS was gone. And so was their only hope to come back home.

"Shouldn't there be any scientists left in the building? Perhaps they have barricaded themselves somewhere," she said with the feeling of panic growing in her.

The Doctor rushed to the main door and sonic-ed it to be locked. Desperate, Martha sank down on a chair and looked at him. "What now?" she asked.

"Let's see if there are any video cameras still working here," he suggested and started to wildly use his sonic on the computers. Martha wondered if he had ever read an instruction manual for this thing, or if he had thrown it into a supernova as well. It took The Doctor a while, but then the monitor started flickering and four images of different corridors and labs appeared. In two laboratories half-converted Cybermen were to be seen, who walked in circles and ran against walls from time to time. But one of them seemed to have been constructed fully, and was tempering around at one of the other Cybermen.

The Doctor pointed at him. "He's continuing the conversion. He's probably making himself some sort of Cyber-controller." He tapped the keyboard, and four new camera angles were shown.

They stared at the screen for a while, seeing Cybermen walking through corridors, until Martha suddenly noticed something. "What is that?" she asked excited, and pointed at something that was only slightly captured by a camera. It was tall and appeared dark on the black-and-white-screen, and had a big "P" written on the top.

"I don't know…looks familiar," The Doctor said.

"Could it be the TARDIS?" Martha asked hopeful.

"It's on another floor…but we could try finding it," The Doctor proposed.

They looked through the porthole in the door. "There seem to be no Cybermen in this corridor, just in the lab nearby," he said and unlocked the door. "If we are very silent…"

He wanted to slowly open the door, but it creaked more than it should have. The Doctor and Martha stared at each other. They tiptoed into the corridor. They had just made it halfway to the staircase when the other lab door opened and a half-converted Cyberman tumbled out. Once he had looked around, he did not tumble anymore but walked straight towards them.

"Run!" The Doctor shouted and Martha wouldn't even have needed this command. They turned around and hasted towards the staircase doors. "Upstairs!" The Doctor reminded her when Martha instinctively wanted to run down. She took two steps at once, and threw herself against the door that led to the corridor on the next floor. They rushed into the lab and The Doctor locked the door with his sonic. They heard at least two Cybermen banging outside on the door.

"I think he has managed to convert some of those scientists into real Cybermen," The Doctor said. They both turned around and were again surprised. There was the TARDIS indeed!

Martha had no time to think about the moments of panic she had just lived, and gasped, "But how is this possible?"

The banging on the door became louder.

"I don't know…but I think I don't care at the moment," The Doctor said and tried to fit his key into the keyhole. It gave out sparks because the time frames did not match, but they managed to get inside exactly in the moment that the Cybermen broke open the door.

"They won't be able to get into the TARDIS door, don't worry," The Doctor said. "This is strange," he added and looked at the silver-blue interior. "I don't recognise this…and I definitely don't like it."

"But…what is this?"

"It's the TARDIS."

"Not yours."

"Yes, it is. She just looks differently from the inside. She does that sometimes."

Martha was confused. But to not increase her confusion, she decided to not pose any further questions.

The Doctor touched the main controls. Another set of sparks flew. Martha backed off and had instead a closer look. This room did not seem as big as her Doctor's main room. There was a second level, and upstairs there were bookshelves, an armchair, a blackboard with weird equations and more books lying around. She wondered if this was a TARDIS of the Doctor's future, and if so, if this future Doctor still travelled with her – or had another companion.

"I could try to land where the TARDIS has been before," The Doctor explained and Martha was torn out of her thoughts.

"I'm not sure whether I could manage the last landing positions, but surely one of the last three," he added and even more sparks flew out of the console when the zodiac-building-block-thingy-things above the console started to rotate and the TARDIS entered the time vortex. Martha grabbed hold and prayed for that the future Doctor knew what he did when flying this space ship.

"Before we left, I downloaded the facility's CCTV material into the TARDIS," The Doctor explained. Martha walked over to him while the TARDIS kept rocking. "Let's see what happened when this TARDIS landed."

They started the tape several hours ago and fast-forwarded until they saw this newer TARDIS materialising. A moment later, a man stepped out and The Doctor paused the play.

"Who is it?" Martha asked.

"An old friend of mine…"

"And with friend you mean enemy?"

"Arch-enemy."

"Of course." What else had she expected?

He continued the tape. The Master got out of the TARDIS, walked into the computer science lab on the highest floor and seemed to be downloading information onto a small device. When he was on his way down again, he encountered some Cybermen, and as this wasn't something he had planned, he hid in one of the labs – coincidentally the one where Martha and The Doctor had landed in before. The Master seemed as surprised of the second TARDIS as The Doctor had been, but took his chance and decided to use this TARDIS for his next trip – of course not without waving happily at the camera.

Neither The Doctor nor Martha spoke a word. Suddenly, the TARDIS stopped rocking.

"Where are we?" she asked, and he checked the main computer.

"Well, the TARDIS had aimed for Aberdeen, 2026. We're now in Aberdeen, 2027-ish…and the space coordinates are slightly different as well…for example the landing environment influences the TARDIS." He checked the external camera and – there was another TARDIS standing right next to them. "Such as another TARDIS…which normally attracts any other time travelling devices…" They looked at each other, and without a word, they ran outside – just to see The Master already waiting with a laser gun in his hands.

"Finally," the rival Timelord said.

The next thing Martha remembered was her vision becoming black. She woke up with a terrible headache and her eyes hurt incredibly. She looked around. She and The Doctor were lying on the floor of the same lab where they had landed. She got up and walked towards The Master but was thrown back by the electric shock of a force field that flickered when she touched it. She fell down again.

The Master laughed. "Force field," he explained and continued his work at the computers.

"What are you doing?" The Doctor asked. He had also regained his consciousness.

The Master was about to answer, when another TARDIS noise was to be heard. Right next to 12th's TARDIS, which had been used by the 10th Doctor, the 8th Doctor TARDIS appeared.

"Who else is coming to the party?" The Master said surprised and grabbed his laser gun. "Oh by the way," he turned back to 10 and Martha with a devilish smile, "the stunning effect lasts longer than you think – you'll be drifting in and out of conscious for the next few hours."

The moment he said it, Martha's legs felt weaker and a few seconds later she collapsed to the ground. The Master chuckled and turned back to the newly arrived TARDIS whose doors opened. The 12th Doctor stepped out, followed by Aleja, who had changed her pullover.

"Didn't I kill you?" The Master asked and pointed the gun at Aleja.

She didn't respond, but just stared at him, really, really scared.

"What's your plan?" 12 asked. He showed that he had no time for games.

The Master walked backwards and typed in commands into the computer. Force fields flickered and imprisoned Aleja and The Doctor.

"Why didn't you activate these when the terrorists invaded the facility?" 12 whispered.

"They had been the first thing the attackers had targeted. They were offline within minutes," Aleja explained, but then added, "You start to remember?"

12 nodded.

"How have you found me?" The Master asked.

"Oh, no. First you tell me what you are planning," 12 interrupted with a smile.

"Tell me how you came here!"

"Figure it out for yourself."

"I assume you have found out about the several Keel Miller Industries all over the universe…you have visited some of them to find me – and here you have been lucky," The Master guessed, and he knew that he guessed right.

"Now tell me what you're planning," 12 demanded. "It has something to do with prolonging your life…"

"And you are right, Doctor. That is indeed my plan," The Master said while he continued working on the computers. "As you may know, especially as you are a future version of the one I had to encounter several times in 1970's Earth, I am on my last life, and I see no fairness in dying yet. I have so much to do… I started on Mondas. I pretended to be a researcher and I founded the so called Keel Miller industries. I already told you that it's an anagram for Emil Keller, another name I had once used. I don't know whether you remember…the Romulan mind probes are rather effective."

"I do…more or less, thank you for asking," 12 answered sarcastically. Aleja remained standing next to him like a statue. She seemed too shocked to move. What was she supposed to feel? She hated this man, she had despised him all her life. But now her hatred had a face. The face of The Master, The Doctor's arch-enemy whose hands dripped with the blood of many innocent souls. On the other side, he was her father. He had created her, although he had never known. How would he react if she told him? Would he still try to kill her? Or would he show mercy regarding his own flesh and blood?

"Well, as I said, I started on Mondas. Then I went to Earth, established again a personality called Keel Miller. In order to build this facility in which we are standing right now, I had to find some UNIT files about Mondas and destroy them so that no one could see the parallels. And infiltrating the UNIT archive also helped building this facility."

"How did you get access to the UNIT files?" Aleja finally decided to speak. Her voice was trembling and her eyes were wet.

"I pretended love to one of their workers. It was rather easy, and much more efficient than killing and blackmailing. This way I only had to get past her and could easily –"

"Alright, alright," 12 interrupted. He felt how Aleja was close to tears. He grabbed her hand and held it tightly. He didn't want The Master yet to know what he had done. "Carry on."

"On Mondas, the research was focused on cybergenetics, but this seemed inefficient. Here on Earth, I tried to find a way to regenerate every single cell in the body. It seems very promising. I'm draining energy from Weeping Angels. As Weeping Angels were Timelords once, the type of energy is compatible with my cells. I conducted similar studies on Bajor in the 24th century, and on Trill in the 28th century, until the facility was destroyed by that time's Torchwood. The same happened to my small laboratory in 18th century London."

"I see you have been very keen," 12 muttered.

"Yes, and if you will excuse me now, I have an experiment to finish," The Master said. "I have been collecting data from all my research sites, and now it is time to combine it. Remember the lab where we met last year? In the cellar?"

"The cellars have been filled up," Aleja reminded him.

The Master was surprised that she knew that. "I take it you worked here?"

She nodded.

"So you have been working on my project…you have been contributing to my success. Thank you very much."

She kept her poker face. A silent tear though rolled over her cheek.

"But unfortunately you don't know that I have bribed the company who was responsible for this. There still is a laboratory down there, but impossible to be reached without a TARDIS." He looked at the three big blue boxes. "Which one do you think I shall take?" He decided for the 12th's Doctor TARDIS in the middle and seconds later he was gone.


	18. Serial 5 - Episode 2

Episode 2 – The Evil Master Plan

Aleja dared to breathe again. She couldn't hold back her tears anymore but started crying and sobbing. How could this have happened to her? She had always thought about how her father might have been, but she had never imagined him like this. A ruthless criminal from another planet who walked over bodies to extend his own life! He even killed her the first time he saw her. For his defence, he did not know who she was, but she doubted now that this would change his feelings. If he even had any. She wiped away her tears, but more kept running down her cheeks. She felt the arms of 12 embracing her. He had never seemed like the hugging type, but probably even he couldn't withstand a girl desperately crying.

"It's going to be okay," he said softly. He looked up when the 8th Doctor TARDIS door opened and the 8th Doctor stepped out. They nodded at each other, and the younger one deactivated the force fields.

"What are we going to do with this one of us and Martha?" 12 asked and let go of Aleja. She still felt unsecure, but she managed to wipe away her tears with a handkerchief.

"We should put them into their TARDIS and set in new coordinates. I doubt that we will remember – he will remember, I mean," 8 said. Aleja went to open 10th's TARDIS and 12 and 8 carried himself and his companion into the main control room.

"I set coordinates for Risa," 8 explained and also set in a delay. When the three of them were out again, the TARDIS dematerialised. "Now we have to go for The Master."

They hurried into 8th's TARDIS.

"You alright, Aleja?" 8 asked while 12 set new coordinated for the facility's basement.

"No," she said and he wiped away another tear. She couldn't help but cry. All her life she had believed she was a good person, but now that she realised where 50% of herself came from…she doubted who she actually was. She feared that she might be a bit like him, and hadn't realised.

"I would be surprised if you were," the 8th Doctor said and hugged her deeply. "We will stop him, Aleja. But I promise you we won't harm him."

"I…I don't know what I should feel. A part of me wants to kill him, another part doesn't because he is my father…after everything he has done; he is still my father."

8 nodded. He could understand that she was torn between two feelings. She needed time to sort herself out. Unfortunately, he couldn't give her this time right now. They landed again.

"Let's go," 12 said and rushed past them.

8 and Aleja looked at each other, shrugged, and followed 12 who had already stepped outside. The laboratory looked more or less like he remembered it. The Weeping Angels were chained again, this time it was five of them. An additional force field secured the safety of The Master who was working with a holographic computer display in the middle of the room. This way he could look at his work and the Weeping Angels at the same time. The wall opposite the Weeping Angels was also decorated with mirrors.

The Master turned around, and before he could react, 12 punched him in the face. While 12 struggled with his arch-enemy, muttering something like that he preferred him several incarnations later, 8 and Aleja hurried to the holo-computer. "He's been draining energy of the Weeping Angels. They can't move anymore, even if they are not being looked at. The energy is transferred into this Cyberman regeneration pod," he explained and pointed at the Cybermen technology left to them. "If he connected himself, the cells would fill himself up with regeneration energy and he could regenerate again."

"Oh my god, and I wrote my thesis about this sort of technology," Aleja realised. How could she have been so stupid? She had always liked the idea of an extended life, from a biological perspective of course. She had never wanted to live longer than normal, she had just wanted to live a normal life. But the aspect of enhancing cells seemed so fascinating that she had specialised on it in her Master's course and gladly accepted when her professor had offered her to do a project at the Keel Miller Research Facility. Every scientist in Aberdeen dreamed of working there, as they were the most enhanced research plant in Europe. How come no one had never suspected anything? She wondered whether more people than her mother had paid the price; whether in this facility where she worked at, people had been bribed or killed to keep silence.

"The problem is," 8 began, "when Weeping Angels are drained of their energy, and they are in the form of stone, they also take on the properties of stone. Right now, these Angels can't transform. They're too weak to move. I think the more energy they lose, the more difficult it will become for them to hold their form. The forces between their single molecules will start to weaken, as the energy is drawn away."

"Can't we destroy this machine?" Aleja asked and pointed at the Cyber-pod.

"The progress is too advanced. We can't do anything for the Angels. But we need to disconnect the pod from the Angels or both will blow into pieces."

While 8 tried to stop the energy draining process on the computer, Aleja started to tear the cables out of the pod and disconnect it from both the computer and the Weeping Angels themselves.

"Doctor," she screamed and pointed at the Angels. Two had come closer.

"Oh, my theory about them being too weak seems to be only partly correct," the 8th Doctor noted. But the hand with which the closest Angels reached out began to fall into pieces and shattered on the ground. Aleja continued disconnecting cables but also tried to keep the Angels in view. Suddenly, she felt and electric shock and her vision blackened for a second. She fell to the ground.

"Aleja!" 8 shouted and ran towards her. He kneed over her when she regained consciousness.

"What happened?" she asked confused.

"I think…I think all the energy from the pod just transferred into you."

"What?" She sat up in no time. Scared, she looked at the Weeping Angels who were falling down into stone fragments.

"Remember when The Creator had told you that you only have five regenerations because you are not a full Timelord?" he asked.

She nodded.

"I think you just gained energy for a few more regenerations!"

"But…I don't want to…" she muttered. How long would she live? How many people would she see die? Would she end up as alone as The Doctor? She had no time to think about it. 8 was knocked down by his own incarnation stumbling over him and falling to the floor. Aleja jumped up and pushed The Master away when he tried to attack 8.

"Haven't we had a similar situation to this?" he asked and grabbed her neck.

Both 8 and 12 got up again.

"Do one step towards me and she dies!" The Master warned them.

The Doctors hesitated. Aleja didn't know whether she should hope that he killed her or not. She had enough lives, and she didn't want to fully live them, but she should also be careful. She had died once already, and only because of pure luck she was still alive. Did she just want another reason to hate him? So that she could defend her feelings with the fact that her own father has killed her twice. She didn't know what to think or what to feel. And she was having this sensation too often within the past few hours.

"Don't," 12 shouted. "You would never be able to forgive it yourself."

The Master laughed. "And why is that the case?"

"Remember that UNIT woman you seduced years ago to break into the archive?" Aleja said. She could hardly breathe because The Master's grab on her neck was so strong. "She became pregnant…and I am your daughter."


	19. Serial 5 - Episode 3

Episode 3 – Wherever you go…

"You're what?" The Master asked. He wasn't sure whether to believe her or not.

"She's right," 8 said. "When you stabbed her, she regenerated. We took her to Gallifrey and The Creator confirmed her identity with a DNA test."

"It's a trick!"

"No, no it isn't," 12 said dead-serious.

The Master wanted to respond but Aleja was quicker to act. She had removed her time vortex manipulator that she had still been wearing, and put it onto The Master's arm. Before he could protest, she pressed the button and jumped out of The Master's arms. He disappeared and she fell to the ground. Both Doctors came to help her up.

"That was…fantastic!" 8 said, and received a strange look from 12. "I'm pretty sure Jack will be quite surprised when The Master suddenly appears next to him."

"Let's just hope he does the right thing – locking him up," 12 said and imagined what would happen if Jack ever met Missy…he preferred not to think about it.

A huge crack in the wall made them pay attention again to their surroundings. "The Master has not only stolen energy from the Angels, but also from the facility itself," 8 mentioned.

"You could have said this earlier," 12 answered and they hurried towards the two TARDIS's.

"We should make sure that all the other facilities are being destroyed as well," 8 said.

"And we should make sure that Captain Jack has really locked up The Master," 12 added.

"Then each of us will do so," 8 said and turned to Aleja. "With whom do you want to travel?"

Aleja looked at them surprised. Another decision? She liked 8, but she had also come to love 12. They were both the same person, so what was the point? The wall behind them collapsed. Dust came down the ceiling, she had to hurry.

"I want to see The Master again…after all, he is my father and we should have a talk."

8 nodded. "Then I'll see you in a few hundred years," he said with a smile on his face and hugged her. 12 rolled his eyes. How could he have endured that much hugging? The 8th Doctor disappeared in the TARDIS.

"We should leave," the 12th Doctor said and led her into his spaceship.

She was still amazed how different the TARDIS looked. It wasn't at all like a lovely living room anymore, rather than a science lab. Only the armchairs and the bookshelves let her guess that someone actually lived in here. "What happens to the facility?" she asked.

"We can take a look," 12 answered and steered his TARDIS to the outside of the building and they stepped out into the snow. They had landed approximately two hundred meters away from the main gates. Aleja had never walked the way to the town by feet and just realised how steep it was. She turned back to the facility just in time to see the huge complex collapse under a gigantic cloud of dust.

"I guess I won't be applying here for a job any time soon," she commented sadly.

"It's right now more or less 25 hours later than when my previous incarnation asked you to join him," 12 said.

"Let's go and see the man responsible for all this." She turned around and entered the TARDIS with a bad mood. She had wanted to work there. She was glad that no one had been inside as the facility had been shut down 'this morning' until the police investigation was to be finished. Whatever she decided to do, keep travelling with the Doctor or not, she definitely wanted to finish writing her thesis and graduate. Then at least she would be qualified for job. She shook her head. How could she think about her career when many men's work has been destroyed?

"18th century," the 12th Doctor said and started the TARDIS.

Aleja loved the sound it was making. She would miss it. The trip was shorter than she had expected. "Are you sure the coordinates are correct?"

The Doctor gently tapped the computer screen. Then he tapped it again less gently. "I think it's the wrong date."

"How wrong?" Aleja asked and followed The Doctor who was leaving the TARDIS.

She stepped outside. They had landed on a huge place which she did not recognise. But it was definitely not the 18th century.

"Doctor!" a familiar voice behind them said.

They turned around and saw Captain Jack. The Doctor gave Aleja the 'told you'-glance, but she wasn't impressed. "What day is today?" she asked Jack who seemed to be glad to see her again.

"It's the year 2012," he explained. "A few months after Miracle 'Day'…"

Both the Doctor and Aleja shook their heads.

"How could you forget something like that?" Jack wondered. Then he asked, "What brings you here?"

"Actually we wanted to see you one hundred years earlier," Aleja said. She was still surprised that he looked exactly like a century ago. Although the Doctors had explained to her what had happened to him, she kept wondering whether he could cope with this immortal life. Maybe she could learn something from him?

"What about The Master?" the 12th Doctor asked.

"Well…I'm not surprised you ask me that… He escaped about a week after he suddenly appeared next to me…" Jack coughed. Obviously, the appearance of The Master hadn't been in the best moment. "I guess you used the vortex manipulator to transport him to me?"

Aleja nodded. "When we tried to apprehend him, he threatened to kill me. It was the only possibility," she explained. "We had actually come to speak to The Master…or at least I have," she added a bit disappointed.

"I'm sure we'll meet her again," 12 said.

"Her?" Jack and Aleja asked at the same time.

"He's a Timelord. He changes his face when regenerating. The last time I met him…well, the oldest version I met of him…was a woman."

"But…wouldn't that mean that she's my…that doesn't seem right," Aleja stuttered. Did she have two mothers now?

The Doctor just shrugged his shoulders.

"There's also something else I wanted to talk to you about," Jack said to The Doctor. "When The Master escaped, I shot him but he didn't have enough time anymore to perform a full regeneration. When he tried to regenerate, he became sort of…burnt."

"That's how I met him the next time…" 12 realised. "It all makes sense," he said more to himself than to the others.

"So, what are you up to now?" Jack asked. "Travelling the universe, running away from any kind of responsibility?"

"Well, Aleja, what do you want to do?" 12 also turned to Aleja.

She didn't know how to respond. What she actually wanted to do was go home, into her bed, and finally wake up from this dream – or nightmare. "Well… I don't know. We've blown up my workplace, but I still need to finish my project and graduate."

"What are you studying?"

"Applied Biology…with specification in cyber-engineering," she explained.

"I could use a scientist," Jack said. "I'm currently rebuilding a new Torchwood. Old headquarters, new team. I don't have anyone yet… if you want to you could start working for me once you've graduated."

"But I'll graduate in 16 years from now!"

"Then I'll wait 16 years. I'm pretty sure no scientist will stay for that long time."

"I need some time to think about it," Aleja admitted.

"I'll await your decision in 16 years," Jack said and left the two alone again.

Aleja turned to 12.

"You still want to travel the universe," 12 said.

She nodded. "I wasn't born on this planet. I should see more of the universe where I belong to."

"I could visit you from time to time…take you onto little trips. Show you the Eye of Orion, or Vulcan, or even the end of the universe…although let's not do the latter…didn't turn out so well…"

They walked back to the TARDIS and when Aleja shut the doors behind her she knew that her life had only just begun…

 **If you have read up to here without skipping anything, congratulations and many thanks.**

 **If you have skipped... well, nice. Thanks. Just tell me why my story was boring. Negative reviews are still reviews and I can only learn from advice. Or from a future me, but apparently I will not invent time travel or be asked to be a companion.**


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